The Role of International Law in WTO Dispute Settlement Proceedings

Modern international law is composed to a great extent of treaty-based sub-systems. Very often, these systems interact with each other and may give rise to a conflict. The lack of hierarchy in public international law (with the exception of jus cogens) and clear rules on how its norms interact have raised several very important questions. Questions, related to the interplay between different treaty regimes and between treaties and custom, or treaties and general principles of law. Although those problems are omnipresent within the framework of the WTO, which interacts with almost all other rules of international law, and whose dispute settlement mechanism is probably the most frequently applied multilateral system for the legal settlement of disputes among governments, those questions have been desperate to find an answer. The purpose of this work is to illuminate the extent to which Panels and the Appellate Body may apply rules and principles of international law deriving from sources other than the WTO covered agreements.