Notre Dame Law School NDLScholarship Journal Articles Publications 2011 The elS f-Judging WTO Security Exception Roger P. Alford Notre Dame Law School,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship Part of the International Law Commons, and the National Security Law Commons Recommended Citation Roger P. Alford, The Self-Judging WTO Security Exception, 2011 Utah L. Rev. 697 (2011). Available at: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/330 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Publications at NDLScholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of NDLScholarship. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE SELF-JUDGING WTO SECURITY EXCEPTION Roger P. Alford* I. INTRODUCTION The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a remarkably successful international body. Now in its sixteenth year, it boasts 153 Member States and an additional thirty countries pursuing membership.' Only fifteen countries of the world-all small and economically insignificant-are not in the WTO or clamoring to join it. 2 The WTO Member States and applicant countries account for 99.95 percent of world trade, 99.97 percent of world Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and 99.30 percent of the world's population. Equally remarkable is the success of the WTO's judicial branch, the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB). Four hundred twenty-nine complaints have been filed with the WTO, an average of over twenty-five cases per year.4 WTO panels have rendered 179 decisions,5 more in seventeen years than the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decided in sixty-three years.6 The overwhelming majority of these decisions-almost ninety percent-result in a finding of WTO violations.7 Even more remarkable, the respondent State complies with adverse decisions over ninety *C© 2011 Roger P.