Drawing a line of equilibrium in a complex world

Howse and Esserman have produced a quite remarkable paper, and I share the authors’ analysis on most points. Accordingly, the comments that follow are not intended to fuel controversy, but rather to offer a complementary view on the sensitive issue of the balance between political governance and judicialization. I shall begin by reviewing the terms of the question posed, since it can be understood in different ways. In the second section I shall proceed to make a few remarks on what seems to me to be the aspects of greatest interest when assessing the situation of the judge in the World Trade Organization (WTO) system. In the third part of this essay I shall explore, in a broader and comparative perspective, the place and the role of the judge on the international scene.