Originally from Revolution in the International Rule of Law: Essays in Honor of Don Wallace, Jr.

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I. Introduction

Since 1947/1948, there has been a multilateral forum where major
trading nations could assemble, agree on trade liberalization steps, and
agree on rules that would guide their conduct in the international trade
arena. Dispute settlement has been a piece of the system to promote
compliance with agreed rules. But both the GATT (General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade) previously and the WTO (World Trade
Organization) now have lived under the terminology that they were/are
"a member driven organization". At the heart of the system was the need
for sovereigns to periodically negotiate amongst themselves to expand
liberalization and to clarify/expand/contract existing rules or develop
new areas of coverage. As the membership has grown ever larger (as of
June 14, 2013, with the addition of Tajikistan, total WTO membership
was 159 countries or customs areas, with 24 additional applicants in
various stages of the accession process) and, as negotiating rounds have
grown in complexity away from simply identifying new tariff
liberalization commitments Members were willing to make, negotiating
rounds have taken ever longer to complete, if they can be completed at
all. Much has been written about the seeming inability to conclude the
Doha Development Agenda negotiations, started in late 2001. There are
many problems that have been cited for the impasse, but certainly the
change in relative power between developed countries and certain
advanced developing countries and the lack of consensus between the
major players on relative responsibility for moving the system forward is
a major roadblock in traditional areas like level of trade liberalization
that will create equilibrium amongst the major players and complicates