Law Commons^™

Judicial Activism At The World Trade Organization: Developing Principles Of Self-Restraint, J. Kelly

Patrick Kelly

The success of the international trade regime has created demands for international environmental policy, labor standards and other social regulatory policy to be incorporated into the WTO. This article examines the extent to which customary international legal norms should be incorporated into WTO jurisprudence and whether the Appellate Body ought to engage in creative interpretation of WTO norms when legislative development appear blocked. The article explores both the incorporation and creative interpretation debates by assessing them in light of three models of WTO decisionmaking: The Judicial Activist Model, the Contractualist Model, and the Legislative Model. The article adopts a contractualist …