UCL - Joseph Weiler on the WTO

UCL CENTRE FOR LAW AND GOVERNANCE IN EUROPE,
with the International Law Association and WTO Scholars' Forum



WTO: The Appellate Body and its Hermeneutics:
How long will its "Infant's Disease" Last?
Professor Joseph Weiler
Director, Jean Monnet Centre for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice, NYU School of Law

Chaired by
Professor Joanne Scott, UCL

on Monday 26 October 2009, from 1-2pm

Venue:
UCL Law Faculty
Bentham House, Endsleigh Gardens
London WC1H 0EG

About the lecture:

The jurisprudence of the Appellate Body of the WTO has been characterized by a distinct hermeneutic. The AB likes to present its approach to interpretation as sternly faithful to Articles 31 and 32 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, with the implied premise that these Articles, endlessly and ritualistically cited, offer an objective and uncontested method of interpretation. Whether the AB as an Institution or its shifting Members, actually believe its hermeneutic rhetoric, is not clear. However, given the notorious open textured and indeterminant nature of the Articles, it is self evident, indeed an almost trivial observation, that it was the practice of interpretation of the Appellate Body (especially in its early years) which gave a particular meaning to these Articles rather than some essential meaning of the Articles shaping the practice of interpretation. The early hermeneutic understanding enters into a subsequent self-re-enforcing cycle. You give meaning to the rule of interpretation by the way you interpret and the rule, thus construed and reinforced will now shape the way your interpret. The distinctiveness of its hermeneutic has been evident in, for example, an ostensible literalism one manifestation of which has been a reliance on dictionary definitions to resolve interpretative conflicts to a degree vastly greater than other international tribunals -- all of whom equally claim to be relying on Articles 31 and 32 of the VCLT. Likewise, the AB has its own way of construing "Object and Purpose."

In this lecture Professor Weiler will speculate on the motives of the AB in adopting this hermeneutic, analyze whether it actually explains outcomes or is a mere rhetorical dressing, evaluate whether it has served and continues to serve the interest of the system(s) (WTO; general international law), and assess the extent of possible change, actual and potential.

About the speaker:

J.H.H. Weiler is University Professor at NYU and Director of the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice. He is also Honorary Professor at University College London. He has previously been Professor of Law at the European University in Florence, Italy, at the Michigan Law School and a Chaired Professor at Harvard Law School. He earned his BA (First Class Honours) at the University of Sussex in the School of Social Sciences. He took his LL.B and LL.M at Cambridge and his Ph.D at the EUI. He received a doctorate Honoris Causa from London University, from the University of Sussex, from Edingburgh and from the University of Macerata. He has served as a Panel Member with the WTO, NAFTA, the ICC and in private intergovernmental arbitration and in various advisory functions to the Institutions of the European Union.

His books include Un Europa Cristiana (Rizzoli) (translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, Hungarian, Slovenian, Dutch,French,); The EU, the WTO, and the NAFTA: Towards a Common Law of International Trade (OUP); and The Constitution of Europe: "Do the Clothes Have an Emperor?" and other Essays on European Integration (CUP) translated into Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Slovenian, Italian, Serbian,Rumanian). He is the author of a Novel, Der Fall Steinmann (Piper).