Benelux Court of Justice - the most minimal space for the loosing party's position in its judgment

For a postmodern lawyer, the position of the loosing party is one of the most interesting things. Among all the Courts that are reviewed in this blog, the Benelux Court of Justice has with no doubt the most minimal space in its judgments for the parties to a litigation. For instance, in judgment Salvatore Sileci, A 2010/4, it just mentions that Mr Sileci filed 3 procedural documents. If you are clever enough you can try to deduce the positions of the parties from the preliminary questions of the Belgian Court of Cassation.

For contrast, the WTO Panel, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the ILO and the European Ombudsman provide maximum space, and even describe the content of each procedural document. Apparently, the EU OHIM starts publishing the very documents on its website, and thus making a record on representing the ideas of the parties.


The ECJ, the ECHR, and the UN HRC are, in turn, situated between the Benelux Court of Justice and the adjudicators providing the maximum space.

Towards a ban on the US zeroing approach to anti-dumping policy, WT/DS382/R

After a number of contradictory adjudications (legal-illegal-legal, and a definite unknowability), the World Trade Organization (WTO) Panel made a more conclusive step towards prohibiting the US zeroing approach to anti-dumping policy in case USA - Orange juice, WT/DS382/R.

Zeroing is an administrative practice of punishing companies for dumping in a situation where this particular dumping could be compensated with a comparison of prices in other cases, with the picture taken as a whole.

The Panel interpreted that, on balance, zeroing is incompatible with the principle of fair comparison (§ 7.153). The US Administration argued that no legal provision had previewed how to aggregate multiple price comparisons (§ 7.137).

The EU, Japan and certain other WTO Members supported 2 Brazilian orange juice producers Cutrale SA and Fischer SA in this dispute.