WTO Disputes & Documents - International Trade, WTO & Environmental Law - A Research Guide - LibGuides at University of San Francisco School of Law

Abridged WTO & GATT Reports - Georgetown

Abridged GATT and WTO Panel & Appellate Body Reports - Georgetown IIEL
Selected GATT and WTO Panel and Appellate Body Reports abridged by Professors John H. Jackson and William Davey, and Fellows at Georgetown's Institute of International Economic Law. The abridged reports are intended to be supplementary materials for students.

These abridgments are useful in situations where it is not possible to read the entire (and often extraordinarily long) report.

WTO Dispute Settlement Gateway

The WTO's Dispute Settlement Gateway is a great place to find dispute cases, dispute documents, and information about the dispute settlement process. This box highlights some of the Gateways most useful features.

The Disputes
Find disputes cases and documents, or browse disputes documents by subject, country, agreement, status, date, short name, or type of report
Index of Disputes Issues - Disputes by Subject
An A-to-Z list to help you find disputes dealing with specific products, services, or facts.
WTO Analytic Index — Guide to WTO Law & Practice
Analysis — with citations — of how various provisions of the WTO agreements have been interpreted. The Analytic Index is analogous to an annotated code. Use it to find how panels and the Appellate Body have interpreted specific provisions of key agreements. It currently covers 1995 - 2004.

WTO Documents Online

The WTO's Documents Online gives access to all types of WTO documents, not just dispute settlement reports. In addition to a kludgy browse function, there are two search options:

Simple Search - WTO Documents Online
Find WTO documents by key word, country, document title, or document symbol. Date restrictions are possible too. To search for all documents from a dispute, follow this example:
WT/DS58*
Advanced Search - WTO Documents Online
Find WTO documents by full-text searches, by product, subject, WTO/GATT Articles, and type — as well as by key word, country, document title, date, document symbol, and other parameters.

WTO Official Site - More Documents

Other helpful features of the WTO site include the following:

WTO Dispute Settlement: One-Page Case Summaries
A free PDF document that "attempts to summarize on a single page the core facts and substantive findings contained in the adopted panel and, where applicable, Appellate Body reports for each decided case." Currently covers 1995 to 2011. (A print copy is available at the Zief Library at K 4610 A7 W673 2012. You can also order one from the WTO for about 35 Swiss Francs.)
Trade and Environment - WTO Trade Topic
News, background information, explanations of WTO rules, and more. Includes a list of major Environmental Disputes in GATT/WTO. One of several Trade Topics on the WTO site.
WTO Official Documents & Legal Texts
Access to all sorts of WTO documents, including those not related to specific disputes. Links to the WTO archive of almost all GATT/WTO documents from 1946 to date as well as to Stanford's GATT Digital Library.

WTO & GATT Documents on Westlaw

The main Westlaw source for WTO and GATT documents is the WTO & GATT Panel Decisions source.

WTO & GATT Panel Decisions - Westlaw
A wide variety of documents from 1948 to the present: reports of panels, appellate bodies, and working groups; awards of arbitrators; actions by the dispute settlement body; notifications of mutually-agreed solutions; notifications of appeals; requests for consultations; requests for the constitution of a panel; submissions by a party; other communications pursuant to the dispute settlement process. See above for search tips.

Sample searches —

Keyword

adv: shrimp w/10 turtle

Title of action

adv: title(meat or beef and hormone) or
adv: title(shrimp)

To restrict results to panel or appellate body reports, add one of the following to your search:

and prelim("report of the panel") or
and prelim("report of the appellate body")

For updates, search by title and document symbol, e.g.,

adv: title(update) and wt/ds58

Document symbol searching? It appears that it is not possible to search Westlaw's WTO & GATT Panels Decisions source for documents bearing a certain document symbol. The nearest equivalent is to search for references to a document symbol within the text of a document. For example:

adv: WT/DS58! [for references to all types documents] or
adv: WT/DS58/R! [for references to panel reports] or
adv: WT/DS58/AB! [for references to reports of appellate bodies]

It's best to combine document symbols with some other form or search, e.g.,

adv: WT/DS58! and prelim("report of the appellate body")

Print Guides to WTO Decisions

These time-saving tools help you find dispute documents quickly. They both organize citations to WTO decisions by topic and by treaty provision.

WTO Appellate Body Repertory of Reports and Awards, 4th ed. by World Trade Organization Appellate Body Secretariat
Call Number: K 4610 .A7 W67 2011 Law Stacks
Publication Date: 2011
Includes "user-friendly information on the development and evolution of case law."
WTO Analytical Index: Guide to WTO Law and Practice, 3d ed.
Call Number: K 4610 .W79 2012 Law Stacks
Publication Date: 2012
This Analytic Index is also available on the WTO web site.

WTO Document Symbols

Each WTO document has a unique, identifying alpha-numerical document symbol. Knowing a bit about these symbols can help you search for documents related to a dispute, or for specific documents.

All WTO documents begin with: WT/.

Document symbols for disputes always begin with WT/DS. Next comes a number that identifies a particular dispute (e.g., WT/DS58). Then there are letters or numbers that help identify the specific document. So a typical dispute document might look something like: WT/DS58/22.

Appellate Body report document symbols contain the element .../AB/R. (For example: WT/DS58/AB/R.)

Panel report document symbols contain the element .../R (For example, WT/DS58/R.)