The Appellate Body is proposing some amendments to its Working Procedures (Word Doc):
We propose the following three amendments to the Working Procedures:
· First, we suggest that an appellant's written submission be filed when an appeal is commenced, namely, on the same day as the filing of a Notice of Appeal, and that all other deadlines for written submissions, the Notice of Other Appeal and third-party notifications be advanced accordingly.
· Secondly, we propose to explicitly authorize, subject to certain conditions, the electronic filing and service of documents.
· Thirdly, we propose to introduce a procedure for consolidating appellate proceedings where two or more disputes share a high degree of commonality and are closely related in time.
They explain the reasons in detail in the document. I don't see anything too controversial in there, although I suppose some Members might object to having to file appellants' submissions earlier.
