On Legal Interpretation In Dispute Settlement Of WTO

WTO Agreement is the treaty which regulates macro-economical relationships among the governments of the WTO member nations and the comprehensive international treaty which is formed based on multi-negotiations lasting nearly half a century concerning GATT. Compared with other international treaties, its contractual feature is more obvious. However, owing to uncertainty of legal terms in the process of the application, vast existence of non-legal terms in WTO Agreement and imperfection of agreements among the WTO member nations, some provisions in WTO Agreement are more ambiguous than other international treaties. Therefore, in the process of application of WTO Agreement, there often exist disputes among the WTO member nations because of its ambiguity. And the settlement of specific disputes by panels and appellate bodies helps clarify the Agreement's ambiguity and ensure the trade system's stability and consistence of the application of WTO Agreement. Judging from the practice of dispute settlement, the process of dispute settlement is substantially one of interpretation and clarification of WTO rules given by DSB and their application to specific cases. Hence, there is no doubt that systematical and intensive researches into legal interpretation by panels and appellate bodies in the process of dispute settlement are of great practical significance for China that has just entered into WTO.By examining the related theories of treaty interpretation and a number of WTO cases, the paper explains the definition of legal interpretation in Dispute Settlement of WTO and the characteristics of legal interpretation and its right, analyses the methods of legal interpretation, researches the principles of legal interpretation and explores the phenomenon of "law-making" in the process of legal interpretation.The paper includes five chapters. The first chapter deals with the general discussion about legal interpretation in Dispute Settlement. This chapter includes five sections, which respectively discuss the definition of legal interpretation, the characteristics of legal interpretation and its right and the necessity of legal interpretation. In the second chapter the author lays the emphasis on different methods of legal interpretation in the process of Dispute Settlement. This chapterincludes four sections, which respectively analyze some methods of textual interpretation, systematic interpretation, teleological interpretation and historical interpretation. The third chapter analyses the principles of legal interpretation in the process of Dispute Settlement abided by panels and appellate bodies .This chapter consist of five sections, which explores the principles of interpretation, namely interpreting with good faith, interpreting effectively, interpreting without leading to conflicts, avoiding interpreting non-provisions and more strictly interpreting exceptions of some provisions. The fourth chapter analyses the effectiveness of legal interpretation. This chapter is composed of two chapters, which separately discuss the effectiveness of legal interpretation concerning individual cases and subsequent ones. The fifth chapter mainly analyses the problem of "law-making" in legal interpretation in the process of Dispute Settlement. This chapter respectively examines the phenomenon of "law-making", its lack of reason and the solutions to the problem of "law-making".