Datasets:

dean22029
/

WTO_Docs

license: mit
language:
  - en
tags:
  - wto
  - trade
  - legal
  - dispute-settlement
  - international-law
  - rag
pretty_name: WTO Dispute Settlement Body Documents
size_categories:
  - 10K<n<100K
configs:
  - config_name: default
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: wto_documents_full.jsonl
dataset_info:
  features:
    - name: folder_number
      dtype: string
    - name: case_number
      dtype: string
    - name: original_filename
      dtype: string
    - name: new_filename
      dtype: string
    - name: doc_sequence
      dtype: int32
    - name: doc_type
      dtype: string
    - name: doc_type_raw
      dtype: string
    - name: doc_class
      dtype: string
    - name: variant
      dtype: string
    - name: part_number
      dtype: int32
    - name: case_title
      dtype: string
    - name: date
      dtype: string
    - name: header_codes
      dtype: string
    - name: agreement_indicators
      dtype: string
    - name: complainant
      dtype: string
    - name: respondent
      dtype: string
    - name: third_parties
      dtype: string
    - name: dispute_stage
      dtype: string
    - name: agreements_cited
      dtype: string
    - name: case_summary
      dtype: string
    - name: page_count
      dtype: int32
    - name: clean_text
      dtype: string
    - name: processing_date
      dtype: string
  splits:
    - name: train
      num_examples: 9414

WTO Dispute Settlement Body Documents

Full-text corpus of official WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) documents spanning DS1–DS626, covering January 1995 through early 2026. Sourced from the WTO's public case repository and processed into structured records for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and NLP research.

Coverage

Stat	Value
Total records	9,414
Unique cases	626 (DS1–DS626)
Date coverage	~95.5% of records
Document types	42 distinct types
Languages processed	English
Source	WTO Dispute Settlement Gateway

Data Structure

Each line in wto_documents_full.jsonl is a JSON object with the following fields:

Case-level fields (repeated per document within a case)

Field	Type	Description
`folder_number`	string	Source folder number (matches case number in most cases)
`case_number`	string	WTO DS case number (e.g. `"267"` for DS267)
`case_title`	string	Official WTO case title in uppercase (e.g. `"EC - MEASURES CONCERNING MEAT AND MEAT PRODUCTS"`)
`complainant`	string	JSON-encoded list of complainant country names
`respondent`	string	JSON-encoded list of respondent country names
`third_parties`	string	JSON-encoded list of third-party country names
`dispute_stage`	string	Furthest procedural stage reached (see Dispute Stages)
`agreements_cited`	string	WTO agreement articles at issue (raw text from case page)
`case_summary`	string	Official WTO case summary (scraped from the WTO website)

Document-level fields

Field	Type	Description
`original_filename`	string	Filename of the source PDF
`new_filename`	string	Standardized filename: `DS{case}_SEQ{nn}_{DocType}[_Variant][_Part].pdf`
`doc_sequence`	integer	Sequential document number within the case
`doc_type`	string	Consolidated document type (42 categories; see Document Types)
`doc_type_raw`	string	Raw document type string extracted from the PDF heading
`doc_class`	string	Filename class: `NUMBERED`, `R_FILE`, `D_FILE`, `W_FILE`, or `CROSS_REF`
`variant`	string or null	Document variant: `Add`, `Corr`, `Rev`, `Sup`, or `null`
`part_number`	integer or null	Part index for multi-part documents (zero-based), or `null`
`date`	string or null	Document date extracted from PDF heading (e.g. `"14 July 2004"`); `null` if not found
`header_codes`	string	Official WTO document codes from the heading (e.g. `"WT/DS267/1"`)
`agreement_indicators`	string	Agreement/article references found in the heading area
`page_count`	integer	Number of pages in the source PDF
`clean_text`	string	Full document text cleaned for embedding (headers, boilerplate, and footnotes removed)
`processing_date`	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of when this record was processed

Document Types

The 42 consolidated document types, with record counts:

Document Type	Count	Description
`Communication`	1,831	Official communications between parties or from the Secretariat
`Request_To_Join_Consultations`	1,036	Third-party requests to join ongoing consultations
`Status_Report`	991	Implementation status reports submitted by respondents
`Addendum`	958	Addenda to previously circulated documents
`Report_Of_Panel`	816	Panel reports (full text or interim)
`Request_For_Consultations`	699	Initial consultation requests filed by complainants
`Request_For_Establishment_Of_Panel`	541	Formal panel establishment requests
`Note_By_Secretariat`	538	Informational notes issued by the WTO Secretariat
`Report_Of_Appellate_Body`	327	Appellate Body reports
`Agreement_Art_21_3`	158	Article 21.3 DSU reasonable period of time determinations
`Notification_Of_Appeal`	158	Formal notifications of appeal to the Appellate Body
`Working_Procedures`	152	Panel or Appellate Body working procedures
`Appellate_Body_Report_And_Panel_Report`	146	Combined circulation of AB + Panel reports
`Recourse`	141	Recourse proceedings (Arts. 21.5, 22.2, 22.6, 22.7)
`Understanding`	133	Bilateral understandings and agreed solutions
`Notification_Of_Mutually_Agreed_Solution`	122	Formal notifications of mutually agreed solutions
`Executive_Summary`	101	Executive summaries of panel or AB reports
`Submission`	88	Party submissions (oral statements, first/second written submissions)
`Request_For_Arbitration`	87	Arbitration requests under DSU Articles 21.3, 22.6, or 25
`Arbitration_Award`	65	Awards or decisions by arbitrators
(22 additional types)	~528	Panel compositions, procedural rulings, cross-references, etc.

Dispute Stages

The dispute_stage field reflects the furthest procedural stage reached by each case:

Stage	Records	Description
`Appellate Body`	3,211	Case reached the Appellate Body
`Panel`	2,449	Panel established and reported; no appeal
`Mutually Agreed Solution`	1,597	Parties settled before or during panel proceedings
`Implementation & Compliance`	1,121	Post-ruling compliance proceedings (Art. 21.5)
`Consultation`	862	Consultations requested; case did not proceed to panel
`Retaliation & Arbitration`	163	Authorization to suspend concessions (Art. 22)

Text Cleaning

The clean_text field has been processed through a 10-step pipeline optimized for embedding quality:

Header-area boilerplate removal (WTO cover page patterns)
Document codes stripped (WT/DS..., G/...)
Language markers removed (anglais/English/français)
Page numbers removed
Footnotes removed (underscore separators + numbered continuations)
Non-English lines removed (French/Spanish detected via function-word threshold)
Repeated case titles deduplicated
Punctuation noise cleaned
Whitespace normalized

OCR (Tesseract) was applied as a fallback for 78 scanned PDFs where PyPDF extraction yielded fewer than 50 characters.

Usage Example

With the HuggingFace `datasets` library (recommended)

from datasets import load_dataset

# Load full dataset
ds = load_dataset("dean22029/WTO_Docs")
df = ds["train"].to_pandas()

# Filter to a single case
ds267 = ds["train"].filter(lambda x: x["case_number"] == "267")

# Filter by document type
consultations = ds["train"].filter(
    lambda x: x["doc_type"] == "Request_For_Consultations"
)

# Filter by dispute stage
appellate = ds["train"].filter(
    lambda x: x["dispute_stage"] == "Appellate Body"
)

# Access a record
print(ds["train"][0]["case_number"])   # "1"
print(ds["train"][0]["doc_type"])      # "Request_For_Consultations"
print(ds["train"][0]["clean_text"][:300])

With plain Python (no dependencies)

import json

with open("wto_documents_full.jsonl") as f:
    for line in f:
        doc = json.loads(line)
        print(doc["case_number"], doc["doc_type"], doc["date"])
        print(doc["clean_text"][:300])
        break

Load all documents for a specific case:

import json

def get_case_docs(jsonl_path, case_number, doc_type=None):
    docs = []
    with open(jsonl_path) as f:
        for line in f:
            doc = json.loads(line)
            if doc["case_number"] == str(case_number):
                if doc_type is None or doc["doc_type"] == doc_type:
                    docs.append(doc)
    return docs

# All documents for DS267 (EC - Beef Hormones)
all_docs = get_case_docs("wto_documents_full.jsonl", 267)

# Consultation requests only
consultations = get_case_docs("wto_documents_full.jsonl", 267, "Request_For_Consultations")

Parse the third_parties field:

import ast

doc = json.loads(line)
third_parties = ast.literal_eval(doc["third_parties"])  # e.g. ["USA", "Canada"]

Data Source and Processing

Documents were scraped from the WTO Dispute Settlement Gateway using Selenium. PDFs were parsed with PyPDFLoader (text-based) and Tesseract OCR (scanned). Dates were extracted multilingually (English, French, Spanish) from PDF headings.

Case metadata (complainant, respondent, third parties, dispute stage, agreements cited, case summary) was scraped separately from WTO case pages and joined by case number.

Known Limitations

third_parties field stores Python list repr strings (e.g. "['USA', 'EU']"); parse with ast.literal_eval().
date is null for ~4.5% of records (mostly untitled addenda and cross-reference files).
Non-English documents (primarily French/Spanish originals) have reduced clean_text quality after line-level language filtering.
Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) has no UN ideal point data in linked panel datasets — expected, as it is not a UN member.
DS627+ cases exist in case metadata but have no associated PDFs in this corpus (collection cutoff: DS626).