WTO Trade Dispute Backlog — 2D Queueing Simulator

The World Trade Organization's Appellate Body — the top court for trade disputes among 164 member states — has sat idle since December 2019 because the United States has refused to confirm replacement judges, leaving it below the 3-judge quorum a panel needs to hear any case. This 2D companion turns the same queueing model into a three-panel dashboard: a bench diagram of the seven seats, a pannable/zoomable pile of pending disputes stacking amber squares, and a scrolling strip chart of arrivals versus throughput. Drag the seated-judges slider to reproduce history (0 seats today, 7 at full strength), set how fast new disputes are filed, and watch the pile grow or drain in real time as panels do or don't form. A toggle switches on the 2020 MPIA workaround, the interim arbitration arrangement that lets opted-in members route around the paralysis at a fraction of the old throughput, while live readouts track cumulative resolutions, backlog size, and the Little's-Law average wait time a filed dispute now faces.