Harvard Law School

Jean Monnet Chair

The Jean Monnet Seminar and Workshop on the European Union, NAFTA and the WTO
Advanced Issues in Law and Policy

Professor J.H.H. Weiler

Harvard Jean Monnet Working Paper 9/00

J.H.H. Weiler

The Rule of Lawyers and the Ethos of Diplomats: Reflections on the Internal and External Legitimacy of WTO Dispute Settlement

Harvard Law School    Cambridge, MA 02138

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© J.H.H. Weiler 2000
Harvard Law School
Cambridge, MA 02138 
USA
The Rule of Lawyers and the Ethos of Diplomats: Reflections on the Internal and External Legitimacy of WTO Dispute Settlement

J.H.H. WEILER*

I. Introduction

No other area of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has received more attention than its Dispute Settlement procedures, arguably the most important systemic outcome of the Uruguay Round. This is not surprising from the perspective of the WTO itself. The Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) was, it is argued, part of a Marrakech “historical deal”—fundamental to the entire outcome of the Uruguay Round. Moreover, the provisions for multilateral dispute resolution are horizontal in nature, extending to all dimensions of the covered agreements. It is not surprising, too, from the perspective of the academic community of WTO watchers: it is becoming increasingly difficult (though some still make the claim) to be a true specialist in all areas of substantive law covered by the agreements. But everyone interested in the WTO is a supposed specialist on dispute settlement—and this includes the sprinkling of political scientists who have come to appreciate the profound importance of the WTO, the many economists and political economists who have appreciated it for years and the rapidly growing number of trade lawyers (many of whom have sniffed the colour of money). The five-year official Review of the process, one of the many casualties of Seattle, brought all this attention into sharp focus.

Much of the reflection on Dispute Settlement has focused, one way or another, on the “juridification” of the WTO. It has been pointed out, ad-nauseum, that prior GATT third party dispute resolution required the consent of the disputants both to begin the process and to accept its results, two features which, it could be cogently argued, compromised foundational principles of the rule of law and chilled the utility of dispute resolution, especially for the meek and economically and politically unequal. Imagine, after all, a domestic legal dispute under municipal law in which the defending party has to give its consent not only to “go to law” but also to accept the results of the legal process—heads I win, tails you lose. 

Inevitably, then, with ever increasing sophistication, the WTO legal paradigm shift occasioned by the acceptance of compulsory adjudication with binding outcomes has attracted most comment. And with good empirical justification. Measured in quantitative terms, Panel and the Appellate Body activity under the new DSU can be described as frenetic. Equally inevitably WTO dispute settlement in general and the Appellate Body and its jurisprudence in particular are taking their rightful place as objects of reflections alongside other major transnational and international courts.

Consequent on all the above, the issue of legitimacy, part of the standard vocabulary of court watching, has now become an essential part of this field too. This brief essay is meant as a footnote to the theme of legitimacy explored in the work of luminaries such as Hudec, Howse and others. 

My interest is primarily in the internal organizational features of dispute settlement and its impact on the grander external contexts. By internal I refer to the world of the WTO itself and its principal institutional actors: The Delegates and delegations, the Secretariat, the Panels, and even the Appellate Body among others. By external I refer to the universe outside the formal Organization: The “Real World” of States and their constitutional organs such as Parliaments, Governments and Courts as well as the world of multinational corporations, of NGOs, of the media and of citizens. 

My article has two intertwined threads and may be stated simply enough. Under the first thread of my article I suggest the existence of an asynchronous development in the transition from the GATT to WTO. Despite the undisputed and much vaunted shift in legal paradigm of WTO dispute settlement, there has been a considerable lag in the internal appreciation and internalisation of the new architecture, a lag reflected in both the attitude of the Delegates, Secretariat and other internal players as well as in many of the actual dispute settlement practices and procedures. The diplomatic ethos which developed in the context of the old GATT dispute settlement tenaciously persists despite the much transformed juridified WTO. 

Under the second thread of my article I argue that one explanation for the lag, alongside personal and institutional inertia, was and is the need for internal  legitimation of the new WTO dispute settlement: The persistent diplomatic ethos and the accompanying practices which support it are reassuring to the internal players and make the legal revolution more palatable and easy to digest. In some ways they even camouflage the extent of the legal revolution. And yet, at times this internal legitimation is being bought at a high price: It accounts for some serious dysfunctions of dispute settlement as well as contributing to an undermining of the external legitimation of the very same process. 

Whether the shift in legal paradigm has been a victory for the Rule of Law or merely a victory for the rule of lawyers is a very serious matter on which the jury is still out. There are some very thoughtful actors and observers who are seriously wondering whether the “historical deal” has truly been beneficial to some of the deeper objectives of the WTO such as establishing stability and “peaceful economic relations”. But given that for now, and the foreseeable future the shift of paradigm has taken place, the persistence of diplomatic practices and habits in the context of a juridical framework might end up undermining the very rule of law and some of the benefits that the new DSU was meant to produce. 

II. The Heritage and Ethos of Diplomacy

There is, of course, some measure of hyperbole in talking of a “paradigm shift” in the WTO dispute resolution. The “old” dispute resolution process, all too quickly dismissed as “non juridical”, did, despite the need for the consent of both parties, result in more than a trickle of Panel decisions, all of which were written in “legalese”, and which did at least to some degree what legal third party dispute resolution is about: ascertaining facts, interpreting a treaty (the GATT) and applying the law as interpreted to a dispute. All very much in the manner it is done today under the new procedures. Even more strikingly, notwithstanding the need for positive consensus of even the losing party, most Panel Reports were in fact adopted. Finally, thanks to the seminal and always fresh work of Bob Hudec, we know that, despite the absence of an orderly regime of sanctions, most adopted reports were in fact complied with. 

And yet, it is not inappropriate to think of that “old” dispute settlement process as diplomacy through other means. The following features of the old dispute settlement process justify in my view this characterization.

1. The “internal” nature of disputes 

A very dominant feature of the GATT was its self-referential and even communitarian ethos explicable in constructivist terms. The GATT successfully managed a relative insulation from the “outside” world of international relations and established among its practitioners a closely knit environment revolving round a certain set of shared normative values (of free trade) and shared institutional (and personal) ambitions situated in a matrix of long-term first-name contacts and friendly personal relationships. GATT operatives became a classical “network”. This phenomenon was a result of several factors, such as the relatively restricted and homogeneous State membership of GATT which eliminated much of the Cold War tensions, the marginalization of trade diplomats within national administrations (considered a second-rate diplomatic career, often disdained by Ministries of Foreign Affairs and left to the “lowlier” trade ministries), the supposed “technical”, and “professional”, nature of the subject matter (considered “low politics” as compared to “high politics” which dealt with security and “real” foreign policy) and the consequent media indifference. Within this ethos, there was an institutional goal to prevent trade disputes from spilling over or, indeed, spilling out into the wider circles of international relations: a trade dispute was an “internal” affair which had, as far as possible, to be resolved (“settled”) as quickly and smoothly as possible within the organization.

2. The discrete nature of disputes

Although disputes might have raised broad systemic issues of relevance and consequence far beyond the immediate parties, the process tended to treat them as discrete eruptions between members requiring “settlement”. This would be attempted in the pre-Panel stage but even if the overt diplomacy failed, empanelment was, indeed, a continuation of diplomacy by other means. In the selection of Panellists, a prime objective would be to find those who would be acceptable to the parties and most suitable to resolving the specific dispute. Very often they were diplomats or ex-diplomats, belonging to the same internal WTO network. It should be noted that some Panels, like Italian Tractors, were potentially of huge systemic significance. But, arguably, these might be considered more the exception than the rule.

3. The intergovernmental nature of disputes

Disputes, and their resolution, were discrete in another sense too: They were perceived as being between—“belonging to”—and pertaining to governments. The implications of GATT rules generally and the outcome of dispute resolution specifically to non-governmental constituencies were only dimly perceived.

There are, I think, two principal explanations for this: first is the classical Government-is-the-State fallacy. International law and international organizations condition a belief in the equation of the State with its Government. It would be hard to conduct international relations and engage in international legal obligations without such an equation. So, to regard GATT disputes in this way would be almost natural. Second, until very late in the day, perhaps until the Tuna-Dolphin disputes, my impression is that GATT practitioners genuinely failed to understand the deep social and political domestic consequences of the regime and disciplines of which they were custodians and their implications for constituencies beyond governments in general and trade ministries in particular. They should, perhaps be forgiven, since these constituencies often lived in the same blissful ignorance. 

4. The confidential nature of disputes 

This happy state of mutual ignorance was in part the result of the diplomatic ethos of confidentiality. Confidentiality is the hallmark of diplomacy. It is, often, a critical ingredient in “Getting to Yes” in delicate negotiations. It is, too, in the way illegible handwriting decipherable only by pharmacists is the hall mark of doctors and superfluous Latinisms the sine-qua-non hallmark of lawyers, a means for self-empowerment and self-aggrandizement. In GATT dispute resolution there was a double level of confidentiality: once a Panel was established, only a narrow range of actors, even within the GATT, were privy to the proceedings. At its conclusion, the outside world was treated to a perfunctory account. Even if not officially shielded and eventually finding their way into the BISD, Panel Reports were for many years hard to come by in timely fashion except for a few privileged cognoscenti. The secrecy surrounding the dispute resolution process is one of the clearest indications of its perception as diplomacy through other means. 

5. Jurisprudence and Jurists’ prudence

The compliance pull of old “GATT” was, indeed, impressive given its voluntaristic nature. In talking to Panellists of that era one gets, however, the impression, difficult to prove empirically, of an ethos which favoured 5:4 outcomes rather than 9:0. Crafting outcomes which would command the consent of both parties and thus be adoptable was the principal task of the Panellists. Custodianship over the Law of the GATT was far from both the minds, and let us be frank, the ability of many Panellists. Both the drafting of Reports and the legal “mumbo-jumbo” were left in the hands of the secretariat. This is not to argue that the law did not play an important constraining role. It did. But it was construed in a context which put a premium on settlement and acceptability, and in a finely tuned process which often combined the diplomatic skill and reflex of the panel with the legal expertise of the Secretariat. There is an unintended honesty in the style of most Panel Reports: They are written in Third Party Reporting style: “the Panel considered, the Panel deliberated et cetera”. It is honest since the writer is typically the legal secretary to the Panel, himself or herself a member of the Secretariat reporting to his or her supervisor. It often shades the truth in that the legal deliberation will often have taken place between legal secretary and other members of the Secretariat and not, in any meaningful sense within the Panel. 

III. The Paradigm Shift—The Rule of Lawyers and the Culture of Law

With all the attention given to the shift to compulsory adjudication, binding outcomes and the creation of the Appellate Body, there is one dimension which, in my view, is not sufficiently articulated and understood. Juridification is a package deal. It includes the Rule of Law but also the Rule of Lawyers. It does not simply (and very importantly) have an impact on the power relations between Members, on the compliance pull of the Agreements, on the ability to have definitive settlement of disputes, on the prospect of having authoritative interpretations of clumsy or deliberate drafting of opaque provisions. It imports, willy-nilly, want it or not, the norms, practices, habits—some noble some self-serving, some helpful some disastrous, some with a concern for justice others with a concern for arcane points of process and procedure—of legal culture. It would be nice if one could take the rule of law without the rule of lawyers. But that is not possible. To have one, you get the other. The dissonance I am explicating is in part a result of the Organization moving to the rule of law without realizing that it comes with a legal culture which is as integral as the compliance and enforcement dimensions of the DSU shift. 

Juridification means that lawyers, practising lawyers, will be involved early on in all stages of dispute management by and within Members. In many states the lawyers will be responsible for dispute management—a trend that will grow with juridification. Ministries of Trade world wide are scurrying to beef up their legal departments. The WTO itself is in the business of providing legal services to poorer Members.

Much of legal culture is at odds with the ethos of diplomacy. Here is a partial inventory.

–	Legal disputes which go to adjudication are not settled; they are won and lost. The headlines talk of “victory” and “defeat” (as in a typical FT or NY Times headline: “The US or the EU went down to defeat in a ruling by etc.”).
–	Law is meant to be a dispassionate discipline of rigorous and objective analysis. It is so—at times. But not when two parties believe the law is on their side and decide to litigate which is a normal occurrence. Then it becomes a profession of passion, of rhetoric of a desire to win strong in even the most reserved and self-controlled practitioners—all inimical to compromise. There are to my knowledge less than a handful of cases  in the history of the WTO (EC Butter WT/DS72; EC Scallops WT/DS 12 &14) where a compromise was found and a dispute settled once a Panel started its work. At that point, the parties, led by legal teams, go for the jugular.
–	Likewise, this discipline of dispassionate and rigorous analysis is practiced by men and women who are like all other professionals: people with ambition, with a search for job satisfaction. The international relations expert will explain, a titre juste, that the new DSU makes legal resolution more attractive to Members because, for example, it can equalize egregious disparities of power which exist at the negotiation table. At the negotiating table a Venezuela is a Venezuela and the United States is The United States and the name of the game is power. At the Bar of Law it is an altogether different paradigm or at least is meant to be so: all are meant to be equal. But make no mistake. A huge factor in the decision whether to go for legal resolution will have been the conscious and often subconscious input by lawyers driven by ambition and their particular professional deformations. The “we can win in court…” becomes in the hands of all too many lawyers an almost automatic trigger to “we should bring the case”. Surgeons like to operate: they have been trained to do that. Lawyers like to litigate and win cases.
–	Juridification involves an empowerment of lawyers both within the WTO itself and within the Members. It is salutary for the rule-of-law at one level when politicians, even of powerful States, are forced to ask their lawyers—“is it legal?”—before they embark on a course of action. But it is empowering of lawyers, makes them much more central and consequently explains the infusion of legal culture into WTO discourse.
–	The Appellate Body was put in place primarily to give States an additional guarantee of review and revision, having given up their veto power over adoption of Panel Reports. But one cannot overestimate the importance of the mere existence of the Appellate Body to a shift in organizational legal culture. The Appellate Body, in style, content and self-understanding is a high court. It reviews Panel Reports in precisely the same way that higher courts review a first instance decision in any of our municipal legal systems. That is how it should be. And there is an inevitable spill over into the style, content and self-understanding of the Panels. Underlying, the pre-WTO ethos of Panels was, consciously and subconsciously, the 5-4 ethos: Crafting an opinion, consistent with the legal advice given by the secretariat but one which, at the same time, would settle the dispute by being adopted by both parties. The Gasoline decision of the Appellate Body, the first it rendered, sent a sharp notice to Panels and the WTO Secretariat, a notice which has become a permanent feature of the Appellate Body jurisprudence. Though it approved most aspects of the Panel Report (and this has been the case in most instances), the Appellate Body, both in tone and content, was sharply critical of the legal reasoning of the Panel on many of the points. The message was clear and I would summarize it as follows: “This is a legal process; here the law rules”. The new ethos, conscious and subconscious, underlying the panel process is no longer the 5-4 mentality. It is “getting it (legally) right” and/or “making it appeal-proof”.
–	Finally, in this very partial list, are the inevitable changes in the DSU process itself brought about by jurisprudence such as the ruling in Banana III which allowed Member States to employ private lawyers in their litigation and in Turtle and Asbestos which opened up of the process to amici briefs. Both decisions (on legal representation and amici) offended some of the very diplomatic reflexes I described above since they contradicted the internal, the discrete and the intergovernmental nature of disputes as perceived by many delegations. And yet in both decision the Appellate Body was doing no more than most conservative and prudent courts would do to ensure the integrity and fairness of legal process. 

This very last point, trivial as it may appear, encapsulates a crucial element of my thesis. The paradigm shift introduced by compulsory adjudication, binding outcomes and the establishment of an Appellate Body, does not only occasion an important shift in legal culture (an “is” statement) but must (an “ought” statement) be so accompanied. There are important normative elements associated with legal process on which its legitimacy depends—some are rooted in legal principles such as the principles of Natural Justice—Nemo Judex in Propria Causa and Audi Alteram Partem. Fairness and openness are other such principles. Others like the quality of legal reasoning, coherence and consistency and communicativeness are not perhaps strict legal principles or rules but indispensable for the proper functioning of legitimate legal process.

IV. Lawyers and Diplomats: The Dissonance

The transition from diplomacy to law has not been easy. Here I wish to point out some of the features of the current system in which the dissonance persists and explore some of the ramifications. My perspective is not judgmental but organic. The dissonance is almost inevitable and its correction, where such correction is needed, will not be painless or without cost especially as there is, in my view, in some cases a certain zero-sum game between internal and external legitimacy.

1. Nomenclature

Words, language and rhetoric are not just communicative instruments. They are oft the signifiers of cultural values, of a certain mindset, of aspirations. They can be, and often are, a mask over a discomforting reality and equally often a slide into self-deception. Here are two examples from the world of sport. The Americans conduct each year a sporting event which comprises teams of only two North American states and yet this event is called “The World Series”. In this appellation we have everything: a culture and a mindset which often enough consider that which is between the Atlantic and the Pacific as “the world”; a mask over a discomforting reality that in this all-American sport, baseball, other nations such as Cuba and Japan have achieved an excellence which equals and perhaps surpasses the originators; and, thus, an endearing dose of self-deception not to say self-delusion. No commentary is needed for our continued use of the words Olympic Games to describe an event which is plagued by overt organizational corruption, by a wilful conversion supported by its promoters to the ethos of profit, and the addiction of its participants to the drugs of media celebrityship and corporate sponsorship. The Olympics have lost any vestige of the innocence conveyed by the word “game” but it suits us to pretend otherwise.

Consider now in similar vein the nomenclature such as “dispute settlement” (rather than judicial process) or “Appellate Body” (rather than High Trade Court or something similar) to which the WTO sticks so tenaciously. From interviews with many delegations I have conducted it is clear that, as mentioned above, they saw the logic of the Appellate Body as a kind of Super-Panel to give a losing party another bite at the cherry, given that the losing party could not longer block adoption of the Panel. It is equally clear to me that they did not fully understand the judicial let alone constitutional nature of the Appellate Body. And yet the Appellate Body is a court in all but name and it even has a constitutional dimension. De Jure the DSU leaves the final interpretation of the Agreements in the hands of the General Council and Ministerial Conference. De facto, unless the Organization is to break the hallowed principle of consensus, that power has shifted to the Appellate Body. The circumstances would have to be utterly unique to envisage a consensus in the General Council and/or Ministerial Conference to overturn an interpretation or decision of the Appellate Body. In interviews many delegations would state, with some incredulity: “We have created a Court…”.

They are right. That is exactly what the Appellate Body is. But it serves for the internal legitimacy of the construct to pretend otherwise. And thus the nomenclature is convenient. It is also, perhaps, convenient for some domestic constituencies, notably the United States Congress in which there is a long tradition among some members to abhor all manner of “world courts”. On the other hand, the failure to call a court a court actually diminishes the external legitimacy of the WTO in general and the Appellate Body more specifically. It feeds the Gnomes-of-Geneva syndrome. The tireless (and increasingly tiresome) accusation that important issues of world and domestic socio-political and economic policy are being decided by “faceless” bureaucrats et cetera feeds on this. The appellation “Appellate Body” is, indeed, almost as bureaucratic (and hence internally comforting) as is “Panel”. But it robs the Appellate Body from the authority and respect which its decisions would have by matching its name to its real function and power: My preference would be for an official name: The International Court of Economic Justice and a diminutive—The World Trade Court.

2. The Panel System: Composition and Selection

Very little has changed at the Panel level of the WTO administration of justice. De facto, it is still the Secretariat which, de facto, has the key role in selecting Panellists, in terms of profile of Panellists the rosters have changed only slightly and the profile of Panels has changed only moderately to reflect the new culture of juridification. Panels are still ad-hoc and transient with no coordination among them. Again, all this is comforting and masks the importance of the change that has taken place, thus increasing internal legitimacy and making the transition smoother. It is the same method, the same cast of characters and the same modus operandi. 

I would argue that the ad-hoc, individualistic selection of Panellists and the isolated manner in which they operate—each Panel a universe unto its own was consistent perhaps with an era in which the prime task was to resolve discrete disputes, but not with an era in which Panel decisions are part of a broad normative binding matrix, involving delicate socio-economic issues, and in which, consequently outcomes are relevant far beyond the specific parties to the dispute itself. 

There must be far more continuity and far more continuous contact among Panellists so that an institutional identity and self understanding emerges and a common ethos and understanding can emerge and develop. This does not necessarily involve the creation of a permanent First Instance in Geneva (though in my view this would be desirable) but it could mean a more stable and limited roster, such as suggested by the EU, greater automaticity of selection and a reconsideration of the nationality-exclusion rule which prevents the selection of the most qualified persons for many of the disputes involving the major players.

I would further argue that the profile of the ideal individual Panellist, or the ideal Panel, given the new reality of WTO dispute resolution, is not reflected in the current roster nor in the selection and composition of Panels. The life experience, professional backgrounds of Panellists have to be commensurate with the evident gravity and profundity of the issues decided in a globalized world. This I submit has conspicuously not been the case in some of the most important instances. Who decides is an important element in the paradigm of legitimacy. Internal legitimacy is, here too, bought at the expense of external legitimacy.

Both Members and the Secretariat have to be far more honest in accepting that the new discipline does not allow a simple continuation of past habits in this respect.

3. Secrecy 

The secrecy of the procedures is a throwback to the diplomatic phase of GATT development. There is still place for it in the consultation phases which lead up to the establishment of the Panels. There is no place for it once a Panel is established. Barring the disclosure of confidential commercial information or secret state documents (a problem that domestic courts face, too, and to which there are many solutions) it should be recognized that we have put in place a judicial process. It is inconsistent with basic principles of open government and transparency of legal proceedings and inconsistent with the very significant issues now under dispute, that the principles of secrecy should still prevail. Only in dictatorships is “justice” administered behind closed doors. Functionally, the Panels and the Appellate Body fulfil the same function and cover the same issue based on similar norms that national courts and the ECJ fulfil in the European Union. It is only the fact that WTO discourse has been dominated for its entire life by civil servants to whom confidentiality and secrecy is both second nature and a source of empowerment and self-importance that this practice has continued to date. Yes, they genuinely believe that opening the process would be bad. They are wrong. Both as regards Panels and as regards the Appellate Body.

4. NGOs and Amici Briefs

This is truly a delicate issue which may be thought as involving primarily a clash of (mostly North American v the Rest of the World) legal cultures. The worldwide practice, even within the West, of allowing amici briefs is mixed. Wholesale opening to NGOs (most of which would be Western) could, it is argued, skew the system considerably. There is truth to this even though it must be realized that already now the system is skewed in all kind of directions, principally by unequal access of private actors (notably multinationals) to Governments.

But there is more to understanding this debate than the discussion of East and West and North and South. This issue, too, plays out to some extent the tension between diplomatic ethos and legal culture. For the diplomats, not only is the WTO historically “their” organization but allowing in NGOs will actually inhibit it from achieving its goals and compromise its integrity. Even more profoundly, the basic intergovernmental reflex, part of the diplomatic ethos, views with horror any attempt by the Organization to pierce the State veil and question in any way the legitimacy of formal governmental positions. But for lawyers, and particularly judges one of whose primary tasks is to preserve and guarantee the integrity of a legal process, the notion of excluding voices affected by one’s decision and not hearing arguments by them runs counter not only to the ethic of open and public process but to the very principles of natural justice.

The modus-operandi established by the Appellate Body seems a perfect example of the interplay between external and internal legitimacy. The audacity of stepping in and allowing amici briefs in principle (external legitimacy) will be counterbalanced, at least at first, by a prudence and conservatism in implementing the principle (internal legitimacy). Go too far in one directions and the Appellate Body would find itself under severe internal challenge. Go too far in the other direction and it will not only become a target of outside sharp attacks but open itself to attack as bowing to political pressure. One should allow a reasonable time to pass before judgment is made as to the success of the “World Trade Court” in finding the appropriate balance. But one word of caution to the Appellate Body: politicians’ legitimacy, typically of a short nature, will often depend on outputs (results). Political institutions’ legitimacy, of a more enduring nature, will depend on inputs (process). The legitimacy of courts which is meant to transcend specific results and to enjoy long endurance will depend on both the integrity of process but, in addition and uniquely, on the quality both substantive and communicative of its reasoning. To reject, imperiously, with no explanation, applications to submit amici briefs is indeed a privilege of emperors, not of courts. The legitimacy of courts rests in grand part on their capacity to listen to the parties, to deliberate impartially favouring neither the powerful nor the meek, to have the courage to decide and then, crucially, to motivate and explain the decisions.

5. The Role of the Secretariat

Juridification has put the Secretariat in an impossible position. De Jure, they are not even players but facilitators of the play of others. That of course is a comforting nonsense. In dispute settlement the Secretariat is meant to be the purveyors of objective legal advice and legal services to Panels. De facto, inevitably and importantly, they are the repository of institutional memory, of horizontal and temporal coherence, of long term hermeneutic strategy—all the things that the Panel system, as a first instance judicial tier, should be but is unable to be. The Secretariat has, and should have, like the Commission of the European Union, a point of view as to the best legal outcome of the dispute. Supposedly the notion of providing “objective legal advice” should protect them from partisanship and the appearance of partisanship. But only non-lawyers with a primitive understanding of hermeneutics and legal process can believe in that. 

The result is schizophrenia in the self-understanding of the Secretariat as regards its role in the DSU process, and all too often conscious and subconscious subterfuge. Like in Freud’s dream theory certain things just have to come out. The views of the Secretariat as to the proper outcome of a dispute will, thus, come out and more invidiously will be consciously and subconsciously pushed upon the Panel. The ability of Panels to be aware of this and to resist it varies considerably. In discussion with quite a few Panellists I have been told that when it came to points of law they did not feel they could meaningfully challenge the legal secretary. This may not have been so critical in the GATT phase of dispute settlement. But when the law controls as much as it does today, this shifts even more power from Panel to Secretariat. This is no big secret and the only novelty, if any, is putting it down on paper so explicitly. The only parallel to this situation I can think of is the relationship between the legal secretary and lay magistrate in the English legal system, not something that one would consciously want to emulate. The Secretariat and the legal secretary to the Panel have a point of view as to the best outcome of the process. On the “micro” Panel level, the relationship between Panels and legal secretary is not only skewed in terms of command of the law but is, overall, neither transparent nor healthy for a judicial system. Organically, the legal secretary reports to his or her supervisor. Their de facto primary loyalty is normally not to the “judges” at whose service they are working: The career of the legal secretary does not depend on the views of the Panel. Indeed, Panellists are never officially asked to report back on the legal secretary. The directors of the Secretariat will have no idea as to the working relationship or the satisfaction or otherwise of the Panel with the legal secretary. Generally speaking this double schizophrenia is an invidious position to be put in and many of the young, highly competent and skilled lawyers who fill this essential job, do not know how to find the correct balance and trip.

Organizationally, at the “macro” level, the process is equally unhealthy. The Secretariat ends up giving (and pushing) “objective” legal advice which, inevitably, favours one of the parties over the other. This is an uncomfortable truth that the Members somehow prefer not to recognize. This advice has huge influence over Panellists (in the selection of which the Secretariat plays a key role). Would it not be better to allow the Legal Service of the Secretariat, openly, fully, without subterfuge to present their legal opinion to the Panel (and the Appellate Body) in each and every case so that it can be evaluated and given the huge weight it deserves by the panels and the Appellate Body, and so that it can be contested by the Member disfavoured by this advice? Would the panels and the Appellate Body not profit from having this advice by the secretariat openly and transparently challenged? If this were the case the role of the Legal Secretary to the Panel could be simplified and redefined into something far less complicated and akin to clerks. The diplomatic ethos abhors the notion of the Secretariat “taking sides” in any dispute. But consider the following. The Commission of the European Union is meant to play a non partisan role in Union politics. And yet, this principle of non-partisanship is not considered compromised by their practice to submit a brief with their position in every single dispute that goes before the European Court of Justice. To be sure the Secretariat of the WTO is distinctly not the Commission of the European Union and should not become one. But would its neutrality be compromised if its Legal Service would do openly what it now does surreptitiously? The reason this proposal is considered by many insiders as sacrilegious is precisely because it compromises the intergovernmental self-understanding of the Organization and other features mentioned in my inventory of the diplomatic ethos. Yet again, internal legitimacy is bought at a potentially high price. Making open, transparent and respectable the important role that the Secretariat has to play in the dispute settlement process is another issue whose time will come. 

6. The Appellate Body

I do not propose in this short article to deal at length with the internal operation of the Appellate Body. On the whole the legitimation strategy practised by the Appellate Body (whether express or implicit) has been one of hermeneutic prudence and institutional modesty with a keen eye on balancing internal and external legitimacy. The almost obsessive attempts of the Appellate Body to characterize wherever possible the normal wide-ranging, sophisticated, multifaceted and eminently legitimate interpretations of the Agreement as “textual” resulting from the ordinary meaning of words is another manifestation of the internal-external legitimacy paradigm. There is, however, one issue where the Appellate Body has not itself fully understood the implications of the legal paradigm shift. Both in its decisions (sometimes gratuitously scathing of panel decisions) and in its organization of its work and self-understanding, it has not grasped that one of its tasks is to be the custodian of the entire judicial element of dispute settlement and that it has an institutional responsibility towards its “first instance”—the Panels. It should be the task of the Appellate Body to socialize, institutionalise and valorise their work of Panels pending a more profound overhaul by the Members of the WTO. This can be done in part in the Appellate Body Reports themselves but also in many discrete actions within the organization. Here, too, there is a lesson to be learnt from the European Court of Justice—different as it is from the Appellate Body. In the EU the ECJ understood early on how critical it was to develop a productive relationship with national courts. One way it did this was to embark on an ambitious program to try and meet as many national judges it could, in Luxembourg and instil in the national judges a relationship of partnership in ensuring the rule of law within the EU. The task of the Appellate Body in this respect, discretely and unobtrusively, is to make the Panellists feel part of the judicial branch of the organization sharing the same ethos and set of values—the pursuit of justice within the oft elusive rule of law.