A Procedural Approach to the Legitimacy of International Adjudication: Developing Standards of Participation in WTO Law

Abstract

Lawmaking by judicial institutions requires legitimation. As international courts gradually play an ever more significant part in the shaping of international law,1 they share with any other lawmaker the need for a convincing basis of legitimacy.2 In the case of international courts, however, this need has to be addressed by taking into account their special function: that is, to review decisions made by other lawmakers (mainly domestic). The question of the legitimacy of judicial institutions is thus crucially connected with the standard they apply in reviewing such decisions.

LL.M. (Cambridge), LL.M. (Heidelberg). The author would like to thank Armin von Bogdandy, Ingo Venzke and Isabel Feichtner for their invaluable comments as well as the members of the Dienstagsrunde at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, for discussion on earlier drafts. This article develops ideas that are part of the author’s ongoing Ph.D. project.