This book puts forward a multidimensional goal-based framework for analysing the effectiveness of the WTO dispute settlement system, while challenging the tendency in current literature to capture the effectiveness of this complex international adjudicatory system through the narrow and fixed concept of compliance. Drawing on the goals - based approach-the book broadly conceptualizes the effectiveness of the WTO dispute settlement system as the extent to which this system achieves its goals, while using the multiple conflicting and shifting objectives set for the system by WTO Members as the key effectiveness benchmarks. In so doing, it offers a comprehensive empirical account of the manifold and contradictory goals-beyond compliance-entrusted with the WTO dispute settlement system by its mandate providers, and probes the complex trade-offs struck between the multiple goals on the ground. This work addresses cutting-edge legal and institutional questions while implementing a qualitative empirical research design. Drawing on numerous interviews with WTO adjudicators, staff members of the WTO Secretariat, state officials, and trade lawyers, Agon crafts an insider's look into the actual world of WTO adjudication and sets out a framework for a more nuanced and complex analysis of judicial effectiveness at the WTO.

International courts and tribunals are increasingly asked to pass judgment on matters that are traditionally considered to fall within the domestic jurisdiction of States. Especially in the fields of human rights, investment, and trade law, international adjudicators commonly evaluate decisions of national authorities that have been made in the course of democratic procedures and public deliberation. A controversial question is whether international adjudicators should review such decisions de novo or show deference to domestic authorities. This book investigates how various international courts and tribunals have responded to this question. In addition to a comparative analysis, the book provides a normative argument, discussing whether different forms of deference are justified in international adjudication. It proposes a distinction between epistemic deference, which is based on the superior capacity of domestic authorities to make factual and technical assessments, and constitutional deference, which is based on the democratic legitimacy of domestic decision-making. The book concludes that epistemic deference is a prudent acknowledgement of the limited expertise of international adjudicators, whereas the case for constitutional deference depends on the relative power of the reviewing court vis-à-vis the domestic legal order.

Examines many seminal experiments in international adjudication and the origins of several major existing international courts.

The post-Cold War proliferation of international adjudicatory bodies and increase in litigation has greatly affected international law and politics. A growing number of international courts and tribunals, exercising jurisdiction over international crimes and sundry international disputes, have become, in some respects, the lynchpin of the international legal system. The Oxford Handbook of International Adjudication charts the transformations in international adjudication that took place astride the twentieth and twenty-first century, bringing together the insight of 47 prominent legal, philosophical, ethical, political, and social science scholars. Overall, the 40 contributions in this Handbook provide an original and comprehensive understanding of the various contemporary forms of international adjudication. The Handbook is divided into six parts. Part I provides an overview of the origins and evolution of international adjudicatory bodies, from the nineteenth century to the present, highlighting the dynamics driving the multiplication of international adjudicative bodies and their uneven expansion. Part II analyses the main families of international adjudicative bodies, providing a detailed study of state-to-state, criminal, human rights, regional economic, and administrative courts and tribunals, as well as arbitral tribunals and international compensation bodies. Part III lays out the theoretical approaches to international adjudication, including those of law, political science, sociology, and philosophy. Part IV examines some contemporary issues in international adjudication, including the behavior, role, and effectiveness of international judges and the political constraints that restrict their function, as well as the making of international law by international courts and tribunals, the relationship between international and domestic adjudicators, the election and selection of judges, the development of judicial ethical standards, and the financing of international courts. Part V examines key actors in international adjudication, including international judges, legal counsel, international prosecutors, and registrars. Finally, Part VI overviews select legal and procedural issues facing international adjudication, such as evidence, fact-finding and experts, jurisdiction and admissibility, the role of third parties, inherent powers, and remedies. The Handbook is an invaluable and thought-provoking resource for scholars and students of international law and political science, as well as for legal practitioners at international courts and tribunals.