In contrast to international investment tribunals, World Trade Organization (WTO) adjudicators have been reluctant to acknowledge the inherent right to regulate under international law explicitly. Policy-based considerations arising from such a right have not been viewed as a standalone component under interpretive analyses in WTO dispute settlement. Instead, they have been integrated only to the extent they find expression in the treaty. This article explores how, on occasion, WTO adjudicators have departed from this orthodox approach by choosing to proactively interpret the WTO Covered Agreements in a way that presupposes a States’ right to regulate, even where this may seem contrary to, or unsupported by, the treaty text. In these cases, the question has not been whether such a right subsists within substantive WTO disciplines, but rather how such a right can be read into these disciplines in a manner that comports with the ordinary rules of treaty interpretation. While this unorthodox approach has resulted in interpretations that appear unclear and uncertain, these outcomes are ultimately explicable in terms of a general principle of regulatory autonomy that can form the basis for more principled interpretive choices.

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规管权及世贸组织协定的解释

与国际投资法庭相反，世界贸易组织（WTO）裁决者一直不愿意明确承认国际法规定的固有监管权。在世贸组织争端解决的解释性分析中，这种权利所产生的基于政策的考虑并未被视为一个独立的组成部分。相反，它们仅在条约中得到体现的范围内被整合。本文探讨了 WTO 裁决者有时如何背离这种正统方法，选择以国家有权监管的方式主动解释 WTO 涵盖的协议，即使这似乎与条约文本。在这些情况下，问题不在于这种权利是否存在于世贸组织的实质性规则中，而是如何以符合条约解释一般规则的方式将这种权利纳入这些学科。虽然这种非正统的方法导致了看似不明确和不确定的解释，但这些结果最终可以根据监管自主权的一般原则来解释，这可以构成更有原则的解释选择的基础。