Research. WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism Appeal Procedures

This thesis is mainly on the standing Appellate Body of DSB. we know that DSB developed from the GAIT disputes settlement system, Compared with GATT's disputes settlement system, DSB has made many progresses. And the Appellate Body, as one of the progress, is a new thing, and plays a very important role in DSB. It is nessary for China to have a good study of it.The thesis is divided into six parts in addition to the introduction, which has about 40,000 words.Part one: The characteristics of DSB and the Appellate body. DSB has the charactistic of speciality. WTO reports are adopted unless there is a consensus "not to adopt them,which is named as "negative consensus". And the Appellate Body itself is also a characteristic. The report of the Applellate body is final and authoritive, the Working Procedures for Applellate Review requires that the working process be timely and secretely.Part two: Study of the Working Procedures for Applellate Review. This part is mainly on who has the right to appeal, to appeal what, how to appeal, how to enforce the Divission's report. At the end of this part, there is a study of the force of the Divission's report, and an analysis of whether the report has the power of precedent case.Part three: Study of Appellate Body's legal quality.after carefully Comparation with the Domestic Court , International Court of Justice and International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes(ICSID) on the subject of process, jurisdictional limits, and other subjects, we can know the legal quality of Appellate Body more clearly.Part four: The Appellate Process's legal influences on Developing counties. We know that most of the WTO members are developing countries, who play a very important role in the disputes settlement process. Since developing countries are not as strong and powerful as developed countries, in trade war they will be in a disadvantageous state. While the DSB especially The Appellate Process provides a good opportunity for developing countries to solve disputes with developed countries on a comparatively fair base. Some developing countries arequite active in DSB and have benefited a lot from their activity. The Appellate Process have special regulations which are useful to developing countries, and developing countries should be more active in the future.Part five: The effects and deflects of Appellate Process. The Appellate Process has properly dealed with the relation between world trade and envirmental protection. Non-Government Organization and private attorneys have taken part in the DSB under the approval of the Appellate Body. Appellate Body also has corrected the legal mistakes appeared in the Panel Process, maintained integrity of WTO regulations, established the principles like Burden of proof and Judicial Economy, which now are widely used in the DSB Process.The Appellate Process is not perfect, for example, it lacks the Remand Authority. The Appellate Process only have the right to deal with legal problems, which exclud the trial of facts. The Panel Process is under the supervison of Appellate Process, while the latter is under no supervision. Compared with the strong developed countries, developing countries are heavy burdened economically and technically. Some countries abuse of the right to appeal, just for the purpose of prolonging the time, while citizen and enterprises, if seriously hurted by trade disputes, have no right to take part in actively. The Appellate Process also lacks transparency.Part six: the influences of Appellate Process on China. Only on the base of carrefully study, can we make good use of the Appellate Process. A special government sector in charge of internationl trade disputes is necessary. Before disputes do appear, we ought to make scientific plan. If we can make preparation for the disputes in advance. We can be in advantegous position when feeing disputes actually.