Normative Heterogeneity and International Responsibility: Another View on the World Trade Organization and its System of Countermeasures

Abstract

As legal subjects, international organizations are seen as apt for both active and passive participation in the international judicial area and, in this regard, are regulated according to a specific responsibility regime, as established by the United Nations International Law Commission, in its latest reports on this matter. The challenge here lies on testing this regime as to its applicability in relation to the World Trade Organization, in view of the fact that this organization’s conduct may potentially produce internationally illicit acts. After asserting the WTO’s juridical nature, normative parameters to which the entity is submitted are established in the general international law based on the acknowledgement of its horizontal and vertical relations with the so-called WTO Law. From this point onwards, it is possible to assert that international illicitness in the World Trade Organization’s practice becomes legally verifiable through an institutional performance capacity analysis of its organs and agents, with special focus on its countermeasures system.

Keywords: International Responsibility, International Organizations, World Trade Organization, Countermeasures

JEL Classification: K33