Nothing gets a public international lawyer more stirred up than a maxim of interpretation, and few maxims hit a nerve more readily than "in dubio mitius".
Thanks to Petros Mavroidis' recent (and highly recommended) post on transnational subsidies, I found myself squandering a Saturday - when I should have been grading papers -- typing in dubio mitius into the internet.
What I came up with was this interesting article from 2009 by Christophe Larourer: In the Name of Sovereignty? The Battle over In Dubio Mitius Inside and Outside the Courts
M. Larourer suggests that the concept of in dubio mitius is obsolete, and that the Appellate Body's reliance upon it in Hormones undermined that Body's legitimacy.
Twelve years later, the question I would like to pose is the following:
Did the Appellate Body (and WTO DS generally) err by relying too heavily on an obsolete principle to the detriment of its legitimacy, or by not resorting to it more consistently?
Any thoughts?
