UCLA International Institute

The institutionalization of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) of the World Trade Organization in 1995 has been widely hailed as a triumph of impartial law over national power. The authors argue that the reality of the power of the WTO's Appellate Body falls short of the legalistic model in three essential respects: complainant nations often refrain from bringing cases where the violator is likely to refuse to abide by a negative decision by the Appellate Body; the Appellate Body itself commonly bends the rules of the WTO when confronting powerful defendants; and losing defendants often procrastinate beyond set time limits for compliance, entering into a post-DSU bargaining process with the complainant outside the mechanism of the World Trade Organizaton.