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The Good Case: Decisions to Litigate at the World Trade Organization
Author(s) -
Conti Joseph A.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
law and society review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1540-5893
pISSN - 0023-9216
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5893.2008.00337.x
Subject(s) - flexibility (engineering) , context (archaeology) , settlement (finance) , world trade , action (physics) , politics , law and economics , inequality , construct (python library) , political science , law , economics , business , international trade , management , paleontology , mathematical analysis , physics , mathematics , finance , quantum mechanics , computer science , payment , biology , programming language
This article draws upon the law‐in‐action, repeat players, and motive to understand how legal actors construct the “good case” in dispute settlement systems. The construction of “good cases” is examined at the World Trade Organization (WTO), a relatively new and unexplored site for the study of dispute settlement. Findings show that the good case encompasses flexible sets of motives including economic, political, and symbolic characteristics of trade grievances to mobilize WTO law. The flexibility is due to uncertainties associated with litigation, which are manifestations of four features of the WTO: the newness of the system, the organizational and legal structure of the dispute system, the context of the WTO as an intergovernmental agreement, and the persistence of inequality between states. Six variations of the good case are identified.