Wto and the Rule of Law

INTRODUCTION
Based on the World Trade Organization’s website (WTO), WTO is a rules-based, member-driven organization — all decisions are made by the member governments, and the rules are the outcome of negotiations among members.
The WTO is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business.
The WTO stands for values such as non-discrimination between its trading partners, lowering trade barriers, predictability and transparence, competitiveness, more beneficial for less developed countries and environment protection.
From the first form of free trade organization (GATT) to today’s organization, the WTO has been praised for introducing the rule of law into international trade. This discussion strives firstly to give an overall view of what is to be defined as the “rule of law”. It also tries to lay out a critical assessment of what really involves the implementation of the “rule of law”. It finally runs through two steps: a humble pointing out of the major flaws of the “rule of law-based” system and an overview of the challenges faced by WTO with illustrations from true cases of trade disputes held within the organization.


I. WTO SUCCESSFULLY INTRODUCED THE RULE OF LAW
• THE RULE OF LAW
For James Camron and Kevin Gray, the main renewal of the WTO resides in the “decision-making by the parties and the resolution of disputes. Under the Dispute Settlement Body (…) consisting of dispute Panels and an Appellate Body now adjudicates trade between the parties”.
“"Rule of law" (…) the meaning itself is contested (…) from Michael Trebilcock and Ron Daniels (…) it is ranging from very "thin" descriptions (rule of law is whatever provides for stability and predictability) to "thick"...