Much of international trade literature is devoted to decisions of World Trade Organization pertaining to trade disputes. Indeed, WTO serves as an important forum for resolutions on issues ranging from intellectual property rights to antidumping duties. However, once WTO publishes its decision, the next step is for the country to implement it. In the United States, the role of compliance with WTO decisions has been devoted to administrative apparatus (i.e. executive branch), which includes Department of Justice. However, the system of checks and balances, a backbone of the U.S. political system, has no place in the international trade arena. The U.S. trade lawyers made attempts to introduce checks on executive branch concerning international trade matters through resurrection of Charming Betsy doctrine and other means, but with limited success. Recent attempts and struggle for a more predominant role of the judiciary branch in fulfilling its function as a “check” on the executive is accessed in my recent paper “Enforcement of World Trade Decisions Through Private Cause of Action in the U.S. Courts,” which concludes that for time being, the WTO decision implementation is the exclusive domain of the executive branch.
