Mr James Bacchus
of the United States Mr Christopher Beeby
of New Zealand
Professor
Claus-Dieter Ehlermann of Germany
Dr Said
El-Naggar of Egypt
Justice
Florentino Feliciano of the Philippines
Mr Julio
Lacarte Murķ of Uruguay
Professor
Mitsuo Matsushita of Japan
The
appointments, which will take effect in mid-December, were made according to the Dispute
Settlement Understanding (DSU) which stipulates that the Appellate Body should comprise
seven persons of recognized authority with demonstrated expertise in law, international
trade and the subject matter of the WTO agreements generally. The DSU also requires that
the Appellate Body be broadly representative of the WTO membership
The selection
was made from a list of 32 candidates from 23 countries, and was based on a proposal
formulated jointly, after appropriate consultations, by the Director-General, and the
Chairmen of the Dispute Settlement Body, the Goods Council, the Services Council, the
TRIPS Council and the General Council.
Note to
editors:
The Appellate
Body will hear appeals from dispute panel cases on issues of law covered in the panel
report and legal interpretations developed by the panel. Three members of the Body will
hear and determine any one appellate case. They can uphold, modify or reverse the legal
findings and conclusions of the panel. Thirty days after it is issued, the Appellate
Body's report will be adopted by the Dispute Settlement Body, and unconditionally accepted
by the parties to the dispute, unless there is a consensus against its adoption.
MEMBERS OF
THE APPELLATE BODY
BIOGRAPHICAL
NOTES:
JAMES
BACCHUS
James Bacchus
of the United States, born 1949, is an attorney who has been closely involved with
international trade matters in both his public and professional careers for more than
twenty years.
During his
tenure in the US Congress, where he served two terms of office in the House of
Representatives from 1991-1994, he was appointed to the ad hoc Trade Policy Coordinating
Committee. From 1979-1981, he had served as Special Assistant to the United States Trade
Representative Reubin Askew.
Since leaving
Congress in January 1995, Mr Bacchus has returned to the Florida-based private law firm of
Greenberg Traurig where he began his legal career before he joined the USTR in 1979. He
has practised widely in the areas of corporate banking and international law.
Mr Bacchus'
educational distinctions include Bachelor of Arts with High Honours in History, Vanderbilt
University, 1971; Master of Arts in History, Yale University, 1973 and Woodrow Wilson
Fellow; and Juris Doctor, Florida State University College of Law, 1978. He has been the
Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Rollins College in Florida, and
remains an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Politics at Rollins, where he teaches
political philosophy and public policy on a variety of issues including international
trade.
CHRISTOPHER
BEEBY
Christopher
Beeby of New Zealand, born 1935, has been a career diplomat for more than thirty years,
specialising in legal and economic affairs. He retired from government service in
mid-1995.
Having gained
his law degrees from Victoria University of Wellington and the London School of Economics,
Mr Beeby joined the legal division of the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1963, where he
worked as the legal adviser to his government's delegation that negotiated the New
Zealand-Australia Free Trade Agreement. In 1969 he became divisional head. In 1976 he was
appointed head of the economic division and held that position until he was posted abroad
as the ambassador to Iran and Pakistan from 1978-80. Upon returning to Wellington, he
served first as Assistant Secretary and then, from 1985, as Deputy Secretary supervising,
among other things, the legal and economic divisions. In 1992, he became New Zealand's
Ambassador to France and Algeria, and Permanent Representative to the OECD.
Throughout
his long public career, Mr Beeby has gathered extensive expertise and experience in
international law, dealing closely with trade, the GATT and the Uruguay Round instruments,
and the construction and application of dispute settlement mechanisms in several different
contexts.
CLAUS-DIETER
EHLERMANN
Professor
Claus-Dieter Ehlermann of Germany, born 1931, is an internationally-recognized authority
on international economic law who currently holds the Chair of Economic Law at the
European University Institute in Florence and is Honorary Professor at the University of
Hamburg. In May 1995, after more than 34 years of service for the European Commission, he
retired from his post of Director-General of the Directorate General for Competition to
the Commission.
In 1961
Professor Ehlermann joined the Legal Service of the European Commission and rose to become
its head in 1977. He served as Director-General of the Legal Service for ten years until
1987 when he was appointed spokesman of the Commission and special adviser of the
President on institutional questions. In 1990 he became Director-General of the
Directorate-General for Competition, bringing him into close contact with competition
authorities in the United States (within the framework of the bilateral US-EU Cooperation
Agreement negotiated in 1990/91) and in Japan, Australia and New Zealand. He also assisted
the fledgling competition authorities in the transition economies of Central and Eastern
Europe.
Since 1972,
Professor Ehlermann has also pursued an academic career, teaching Community Law in Bruges,
Brussels, Hamburg, and, since May 1995, in Florence. He has written more than 160
publications which, since 1991, have dealt primarily with competition law and policy,
industrial policy and international cooperation. He also serves as a member on several
academic advisory bodies, in particular with respect to law reviews.
SAID
EL-NAGGAR
Dr Said
El-Naggar of Egypt, born in 1920, is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Cairo University
and has combined his academic expertise with public service for more than thirty years.
After a
teaching career at Cairo University Dr El-Naggar joined the United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1965 as Deputy Director of the Research Division, a post
he held for six years until he was appointed Director of the United Nations Economic and
Social Office in Beirut, Lebanon. From 1976 to 1984, he served as Executive Director of
the World Bank representing the Arab Countries, before returning to Cairo University as
Professor Emeritus. Since 1991, he has also been President of the New Civic Forum, an NGO
dedicated to economic, political and social liberalization in Egypt.
Dr El-Naggar
graduated from the Faculty of Law at Cairo University in 1942 and completed graduate
studies in economics at London University where he obtained a masters degree in 1948 and
doctorate in 1951. He has also been a research fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, Michigan, and a visiting professor at Princeton University, New Jersey. He is the
author of several books and papers on international trade and finance, economic
development, and the Egyptian economy.
FLORENTINO
FELICIANO
Mr. Justice
Florentino Feliciano of the Philippines, born 1928, is Senior Associate Justice of the
Supreme Court of the Philippines and Vice-Chairman of the Academic Council of the
Institute of International Business Law and Practice of the International Chamber of
Commerce in Paris.
Before
joining the Judiciary in 1986, Mr Feliciano had been a Member since 1962 of the law firm
Sycip, Salazar, Feliciano and Hernandez, where he was extremely involved in trade and
corporate law cases and transactions concerning anti-dumping, intellectual property
rights, banking and insurance services, shipping and telecommunications.
Mr Feliciano
also has extensive experience as an arbitrator in international investment and commercial
disputes at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington,
and at the ICC in Paris. He has been on the Arbitrators Panel of the American Arbitration
Association in New York and was also a Member of the Asian Development Bank Administrative
Tribunal.
Having been
graduated in law from the University of the Philippines, Mr Feliciano went on to earn his
Masters and Doctorate Degrees in law from Yale University. He taught in the Faculty of Law
of the University of the Philippines and of Yale University. A Member of Institut de Droit
International, he has lectured at the Hague Academy of International Law. He has written
and published on various aspects of international business law and public international
law.
JULIO
LACARTE MURĶ
Mr Julio
Lacarte Murķ of Uruguay, born 1918, was a career diplomat who has been involved with the
GATT/WTO trading system since its creation almost fifty years ago and has participated in
all eight rounds of multilateral trade negotiations under the GATT.
Mr Lacarte
served as the Deputy Executive Secretary of the GATT in 1947-48. He returned to the GATT
as Uruguay's Permanent Representative in 1961-66 and 1982-92, during which periods he
served as Chairman of the Council, the Contracting Parties, several dispute settlement
panels, and the Uruguay Round negotiating groups on dispute settlement and institutional
questions. Mr Lacarte has also served as the Deputy Director of the International Trade
and Balance-of-Payments Division of the United Nations and as the Director of Economic
Cooperation among Developing Countries of UNCTAD. He has also been Uruguay's Ambassador to
several countries, including the European Communities, India, Japan, the United States and
Thailand.
In his
academic career, Mr Lacarte has been a professor at the International Association of
Comparative Law and at the University of Comparative Law at Strasbourg University. He has
written several publications, including a recently-published book covering all the subject
matter of the Uruguay Round from its inception to the Marrakesh Final Act.
MITSUO
MATSUSHITA
Professor
Mitsuo Matsushita of Japan, born 1933, is Professor of Law at Seikei University and
Professor Emeritus at Tokyo University.
Having gained
his degrees from Tulane University, USA, and Tokyo University, Professor Matsushita went
on to become widely acknowledged as one of the most authoritative Japanese scholars in the
field of international economic law. In his academic career he has held professorships at
many universities including Harvard, Georgetown, Michigan, Columbia, and at the College of
Europe in Bruges, Belgium. He has written many publications on various aspects of
international trade and competition and investment law.
In his public
career, Professor Matsushita has been attached to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry
of International Trade and Industry as a member of various councils dealing with
telecommunications, customs and tariffs, export and import transactions, and industrial
property . He has also served as a member of the Special Grievance Resolution Council
attached to the Office of Trade and Investment Ombudsman. |
