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Chapter 4 discusses the basic organization and operation of the WTO, emphasizing the consensual nature of the rules it enforces and the activities it undertakes as part of its mandate. Essentially, the chapter highlights the way the WTO is structured and outlines its most important activities. It begins with some history and a summary of trade relations up to the founding of the WTO in 1995. The chapter also examines the important role of the WTO dispute settlement system and prospects for its reform. It also turns to the problem of extending WTO into nontrade areas, in light of the fundamental value proposition of the WTO to its members.

The chapter concludes by summarizing the case for a focused WTO dedicated to trade liberalization, with recommendations for improving the world trading system and rejuvenating the political coalition for trade in the face of globalization and nontrade issues. The WTO provides a framework for capturing trade benefits, which can serve as the foundation not only for economic growth and greater prosperity, but also for a more unified world economy. These benefits, in turn, may contribute to greater political stability, progress on human rights and labor standards, and efforts to secure a sustainable global environment.

This chapter sets the scene for the analysis of the Dispute Settlement System (DSS) operation and goal-attainment efforts in ‘linkage’ (or ‘trade-and’) disputes, the dispute category at the centre of Part II. As the chapter explains, linkage disputes have long subjected the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the DSS to intense legitimacy challenges; they thus form an instructive site for examining how the systemic challenges raised in such cases shape DSS goal-attainment efforts, motivate shifts and trade-offs between its goals, and, in consequence, affect DSS effectiveness in realizing its manifold objectives. The chapter first clarifies the notion of legitimacy as employed here, and situates the story of linkage disputes in the broader historical and institutional context of the multilateral trading system. It then unpacks the various legitimacy challenges encapsulated in linkage disputes while highlighting the shifts these challenges seem to generate between DSS goals, engaging the system in a heightened quest after its legitimization objectives.

This chapter engages in an in-depth, legal-empirical analysis of the landmark US-Shrimp dispute, the first case study examined under the category of trade-and disputes. The chapter begins with a short overview of the disputed measure at issue in US-Shrimp. It then discusses the infamous panel ruling rendered in the case and the intense legitimacy challenges the ruling ignited against the backdrop of the mounting criticism levelled at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the late 1990s. On these foundations, the chapter turns to a comprehensive goal-based reading of the judicial endeavours carried out by the Appellate Body in US-Shrimp along the procedural, substantive, and rhetorical dimensions while tracing the goal shifts and trade-offs struck in the face of the enhanced legitimacy pressures the WTO and its Dispute Settlement System (DSS) confronted in this case. The chapter concludes by tying the goal-achievement patterns identified to the broader DSS goal-based effectiveness framework developed in the book.

Recent years have confronted the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement System (DSS) with an intense wave of complex linkage disputes. US-Clove Cigarettes, which stands at the centre of this chapter, serves as the second case study in the investigation into the DSS’s goal-attainment endeavours in this category of WTO disputes. The chapter begins with a review of several jurisprudential milestones leading from the early US-Shrimp, examined in Chapter 5, to the more recent US-Clove Cigarettes, examined here, with a view to portraying the legitimation continuum of which the latter dispute forms a part. The chapter then discusses the intricate legitimacy setting in which US-Clove Cigarettes unfolded and, through a close goal-oriented analysis, shows how the intensified legitimacy concerns aroused shaped the goals pursued by the DSS and the judicial choices made towards their achievement. The chapter concludes by linking the goal-attainment efforts identified to the broader DSS goal-based effectiveness framework advanced in the book.