Journal Articles

The Politics of Judicial Economy at the World Trade Organization

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International institutions often moderate the legal decisions they render. World Trade Organization (WTO) panels do this by exercising judicial economy. This practice, which is evident in 41 percent of all rulings, involves the decision not to rule on some of the litigants' arguments. The constraint is that it can be appealed. We argue that panels exercise judicial economy when the wider membership is ambivalent about the future consequences of a broader ruling. This is proxied by the “mixed” (that is, nonpartisan) third-party submissions, which are informative because they are costly, jeopardizing a more decisive legal victory that would benefit these governments too. We empirically test this hypothesis, and find that mixed third-party submissions increase the odds of judicial economy by upwards of 68 percent. This suggests that panels invoke judicial economy to politically appease the wider WTO membership, and not just to gain the litigants' compliance in the case at hand.

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Series Title

International Organization

Call Number

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Publisher

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press., 2011

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

00208183

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Edition

Vol. 64, No. 2, April 2010.pp.257-279

Subject(s)

The Politics of Judicial Economy

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