The National Treatment clause (NT) is the first-line defense in the GATT (and in most other trade agreements) against opportunistic exploitation of the inevitable incompleteness of the agreement. This paper examines the role of NT as it applies to internal taxation under the GATT. It is shown...

It has been alleged since its inception that the WTO Dispute Settlement (DS) mechanism is biased against developing countries, as manifested in e.g. allegedly too low rates of dispute initiation. To shed light on this issue, this study analyses the determinants of developing country...

This paper discusses allocation of burden of proof in environmental disputes in the WTO system. Besides laying down the natural principles that (i) the complainant carries the burden to (ii) make a prima facie case that its claim holds, WTO adjudicating bodies have said little of more general...

The basic legal instrument in the WTO Agreement regulating domestic environmental policies is the GATT National Treatment (NT) provision. The practical ambit of this clause is largely determined by the allocation of the burden of proof (BoP) in NT disputes. The purpose of this paper is to...

This study is part of The American Law Institute (ALI) project Legal and Economic Principles of World Trade Law. The project aims to analyze the central instrument in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement for the regulation of trade in goods - The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade...

The paper argues that focusing only on disputes formally raised in the WTO Dispute Settlement system underestimates the extent of trade conflict resolution within the WTO. Both the SPS and TBT Committees address a significant number of 'specific trade concerns' (STCs) that in the overwhelming...

A significant body of research has sought to examine claims that developing countries are under-represented as complainants, and/or over-represented as respondents in the WTO dispute settlement system. Most of this literature has focused on their propensity to participate, the idea being that...

The purpose of the study is to propose interpretations of the National Treatment (NT) provision included in Art. III GATT, unbound by case-law interpretations of this provision. To make such proposals, we need to understand the role of the provision in the agreement. To this end, we first...

The Dispute Settlement (DS) system is a central feature of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement. This compulsory and binding two-level mechanism for the adjudication of disputes between WTO Members is the most active among international courts. The functioning of the DS system has...