The Rule of Law at the WTO: The Appellate Body Crisis and the Limits of Multilateral Adjudication

Abstract

One of the most significant institutional crises in multilateral trade adjudication has been the paralysis of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Appellate Body since 10 December 2019. The crisis has not stopped WTO dispute settlement entirely, but it has removed the second and final tier of adjudication and altered the balance between adjudication, treaty interpretation, and Member control. Panel reports can now be appealed "into the void," and Members' reliance on the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA), concluded under Article 25 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), has grown steadily. This article argues that the crisis is neither a terminal event for WTO legality nor merely a transitional period awaiting automatic restoration, but a deeper contest over the boundaries of international judicial power. Updating and substantially revising an earlier doctrinal treatment of these issues against developments through 2026, the article adds an original quantitative analysis of WTO dispute settlement activity from 1995 to the present, compiled from official WTO statistics, WTO Appellate Body annual reports, and recent secondary sources, and presents this data in three figures. The analysis shows a marked decline in new litigation activity since 2019 alongside steady, though still partial, growth in MPIA membership and caseload. The article concludes that the international rule of law in trade depends less on the uninterrupted operation of a standing tribunal than on the durability of institutionalized expectations of adjudication and compliance among Members, and that the crisis represents a constitutional moment in which those expectations are being renegotiated rather than abandoned.