IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/glopol/v12y2021is3p83-91.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Role of the WTO Secretariat in WTO Disputes – Silent Witness or Ghost Expert?

Author

Listed:
  • Jasper M. Wauters

Abstract

The WTO Secretariat plays an important role in supporting the activities of the WTO membership. This extends to dispute settlement. This paper addresses the question whether the Secretariat may have contributed, directly or indirectly, to the current crisis in the WTO dispute settlement system as has been suggested by some observers. The role of the WTO Secretariat in WTO disputes cannot be underestimated and merits more attention than has been given to it. It would be wrong to blame the Appellate Body crisis on the Secretariat but to ignore its role in the functioning of the WTO dispute settlement system would not be correct either. My focus in this paper is on two related problems that received some attention in WTO reform debates: its role in advising panels and the Appellate Body on legal issues; and its role as ‘invisible experts’ on non‐legal issues such as the assessment of economic arguments and econometric evidence. In particular in the area of providing economic expert advice, there appears to be a problem of legitimacy and due process as a result of the non‐transparent role played by the WTO Secretariat.

Suggested Citation

  • Jasper M. Wauters, 2021. "The Role of the WTO Secretariat in WTO Disputes – Silent Witness or Ghost Expert?," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 12(S3), pages 83-91, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:glopol:v:12:y:2021:i:s3:p:83-91
    DOI: 10.1111/1758-5899.12928
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12928
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1758-5899.12928?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:glopol:v:12:y:2021:i:s3:p:83-91. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.