Chanya will share the preliminary findings from her paper, where she examines the use of precedent by international courts and tribunals as a driver of change, focusing on dispute settlements in international trade and investment regimes. 

By doctrinally and empirically tracing the use of precedent and citations in both regimes, she will argue that both the WTO AB and investment tribunals do consider prior rulings and increasingly so over time. However, the extent and how they are used differ greatly. The shapes of citation networks suggest that the WTO appears to cite as a matter of authority, while investment tribunals cite as a matter of persuasiveness and preference. 

Subsequently, she will explain enabling factors in each regime that potentially influence how the WTO AB and investment tribunals use precedent and how such uses impact the legitimacy of the dispute settlement mechanism in each respective regime.