Contributing to a further “judicialization” of WTO dispute settlement procedures, a most significant improvement upon the GATT dispute settlement mechanism, the appellate review introduced in the DSU is a new feature in the settlement of international trade disputes. Appellate review is an integral part of the new comprehensive dispute settlements annexed to the WTO Agreement as an outcome of the Uruguay Round. The right of a party to a dispute to appeal is clearly spelled out and can be resorted to before the submission of the panel’s report to a DSB meeting. Art. 16.4 of the DSU grants “right to appeal” without subjecting, as do in some domestic jurisdictions and international court procedures, this right to any filtering device.
　Appellate review under the WTO jurisprudence is conducted by a standing Appellate Body, established as a balancing of factor in respect of the quasi-automatic adoption of panel reports. As noted above, the new WTO dispute settlement system provides for quasi-automatic adoption of panel reports by the DSB, without previously existing possibility of blocking consensus under the GATT. The procedures for the enforcement of adopted panel reports have also been strengthened. This legalization was acceptable because the provisions on “interim review” by the panel (Art. 15), and on appellate review by a standing Appellate Body composed of seven independent experts appointed for a four-year term (Art. 17), offer additional safeguards against wrong panel reports. The strictly legal function and expertise of the Appellate Body were perceived as a rule-oriented substitute for the political consensus practice regarding panel reports in the GATT Council, which had been increasingly abused during the last years of the Uruguay Round negotiations. The appellate review is expected to estop losing parties from claiming, as grounds of non-compliance, that the dispute settlement ruling was unfair, erroneous or incomplete because certain arguments had not been addressed.

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