The legalization or judicialization of WTO dispute settlement in 1995 has had a profound impact on the trade-related interests of domestic actors in WTO member states. While judicialization increases transparency and bindingness of rules, it also creates legal vulnerability for WTO-illegal measures. In this article we show that prospect of litigation affects these actors’ propensity to cooperate in the WTO. Our main aim is to identify the conditions how legal vulnerability affects domestic producer groups as well public decision makers in both a potential defendant and a potential complainant in a WTO dispute. We argue that under certain circumstances, legal vulnerability increases the set of acceptable negotiated agreements, enhancing the chances that WTO member states will prefer negotiations over litigation. Empirically, we show that the argument can account for how Brazil, a potential complainant, and the EU and the US, two potential defendants, approached and bargained agricultural negotiations in the Doha round.
