Rebuilding the Cradle of Trade Justice: Institutional Reforms for the WTO Appellate Body Crisis

The suspension of the WTO Appellate Body has triggered a crisis in multilateral trade governance, laying bare a structural conflict between state sovereignty and the rule of law in trade. The US has accused the judiciary of overreach, while China and the EU have condemned rule-breaking, leaving dispute resolution decisions in an enforcement vacuum. Through empirical analysis of three typical casesviolations of the DS140 zero-value rule, the failure to enforce DS397 rulings, and the misuse of provisions in the Turkish pharmaceutical casethis study reveals the paradox of "legal victory but trade failure" and explores how to rebuild judicial boundaries and address litigation inequities in developing countries. A three-pillar solution, namely, judicial authority definition, a dual-track time limit procedure, a reversal of the burden of proof, and a Global Trade Justice Fund, is proposed to resolve the conflict between sovereignty and the judiciary and provide a replicable model of institutional resilience for multilateral governance.