WTO announces appointments to Appellate Body

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 Muró 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 MURÓ

Mr Julio Lacarte Muró 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.