This poll is highly unscientific, but nevertheless I'm curious to see what people think! I'm going to keep it at the top for a few days to give people a chance to vote.
ADDED: I realize now that I should have made more clear that I was after people's views on whether zeroing should be found legal or illegal under WTO rules, not their views on what the prevailing AB jurisprudence says.
THE RESULTS ARE IN:
As of 7:17 pm EST on Sunday, we have had 70 votes. There are probably more that will come in, but I think the trend is pretty clear so I'm going summarize things now (in part so that I can make room at the top of the page for other posts).
There were two basic questions involved in this poll. The first was whether "zeroing" is "good policy" or "bad policy." There was a pretty clear answer to this question: 5 voters thought it was good policy and 65 thought it was bad policy. Obviously, the poll ignores many nuances. For example, there are a number of kinds of zeroing. But as a general matter, the fact that 65 out of 70 people say that zeroing is bad policy is a pretty strong statement.
The second question was whether zeroing should be found legal or illegal under WTO rules. 9 out of 70 (13%) thought it should always be legal under WTO rules. This choice had the fewest votes, but it's a percentage that is not insubstantial. By contrast, 42 (60%) thought zeroing should always be illegal under WTO rules. This was the clear majority position. Finally, 19 (27%) thought that zeroing should be found legal in some situations, but illegal in others.
The split on the second question seems to be a pretty good reflection of the split among panelists and the Appellate Body that we have seen in the various cases over the past few years, with 40% of poll voters saying zeroing should be legal some or all of the time and 60% saying it should be illegal all of the time.
