Originally from:
The WTO: Governance, Dispute Settlement & Developing Countries
The WTO: Governance, Dispute Settlement & Developing Countries-Digital
Chapter 26 - Preview Page
The WTO Doha Development Agenda: Working for a Fairer Global Trading System
Yasuhei Taniguchi, John Jackson, Julio Lacarte Muro, Petros Mavroidis, George Bermann, Frieder Roessler, Werner Zdouc
PROFESSOR TANIGUCHI: It is a great honor to chair the second session with so many distinguished experts in the area. In the previous session, we covered problems related to decision-making and the so-called “Member-driven” nature of the WTO. I always tell my students that the WTO is like a village in ancient Greece with 149 households. There are rich households and poor households, but direct democracy is practiced in this village.
In this session, we are dealing with a microcosm within this village, the village’s judiciary, which specializes in dispute settlement. All of the speakers should be familiar to you. Professor John Jackson of course everybody knows. Ambassador Julio Lacarte Muró is a former colleague of mine at the Appellate Body and, as everybody knows, he is a founding father not only of the Appellate Body, but of the WTO itself. There is a room in the WTO building dedicated to Ambassador Lacarte Muró and we sometimes have hearings in that room. Professor Petros Mavroidis could not participate in the conference. His paper will be presented by Professor George Bermann, who might add some of his own remarks. Professor Bermann will be followed by Dr. Frieder Roessler, who frequently represents developing countries before us as Executive Director of the Advisory Centre on WTO Law and was formerly Director of the Legal Affairs Division of the GATT. Finally, Dr. Werner Zdouc has recently been appointed Director of the Appellate Body Secretariat and has spent many years as a lawyer within the Appellate Body Secretariat and, prior to that, in the WTO’s Legal Affairs Division. We will begin with Professor Jackson.
About the Authors:
Yasuhei Taniguchi has been a member of the Appellate Body since 2000.
John H. Jackson joined the Georgetown Law Center faculty after a distinguished career at Hessel E. Yntema Professor of Law at the University of Michigan.
Julio Lacarte Muro served at the WTO Appellate Body from 1995-2001.
Petros Mavroidis is Edwin B. Parker Professor of Foreign & Comparative Law at Columbia Law School and Professor of Law at the University of Neuchatel.
George Bermann is Jean Monnet Professor of European Law and Gellhorn Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.
Frieder Roessler is Executive Director of the Advisory Centre on WTO Law, based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Werner Zdouc has been director of the WTO Appellate Body Secretariat since 2006.