The Composition and Establishment of the Dispute Settlement Body in ASEAN: Legal Procedural Issue on the Appointment of Appellate Body Members

This paper examines why the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has not appointed members to its Appellate Body. Although ASEAN established its dispute settlement mechanism in 1996 and revised it in 2004 and 2019, the Appellate Body remains unappointed. A similar problem exists in the World Trade Organization (WTO), where the appointment of Appellate Body members has also stalled, preventing the effective operation of appellate review. In contrast, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) does not face this issue. This article analyzes the ASEAN dispute settlement mechanism to identify legal barriers to appointing Appellate Body members. It finds that the requirement of consensus among all ASEAN Member States allows any state to block appointments. To address this problem, the paper suggests introducing a default appointment mechanism and allowing the use of an incomplete roster of Appellate Body members to ensure the system functions effectively