Constitutional Review and International Investment Law


Book Description

Are courts resisting the rise of legal limitations to state action caused by investment treaty commitments? This book pioneers a unique analysis of both investment law and comparative constitutional law by examining how a selection of the highest courts around the world have addressed this potential discord.




Resisting Economic Globalization


Book Description

There is at present much disenchantment with the rules governing international investment. Conceived as a set of disciplines establishing thresholds of tolerable state behaviour, dissatisfaction has precipitated acts of resistance in various parts of the world. Resisting Economic Globalization explores the magnitude of the legal constraints imposed by these rules and institutions associated with the worldwide spread of neoliberalism. Much contemporary theorizing has given up on national states as a locus for countering the harmful effects of economic globalization. Though states provide critical supports to the construction and ongoing maintenance of transnational legal constraints, David Schneiderman argues that states remain crucial sites for resisting, even rolling back, investment law disciplines. Structured as a series of encounters with selected critical theorists, the book contrasts theoretical diagnoses with recent episodes of resistance impeding investment law edicts. This novel approach tests contemporary hypotheses offered by leading political and legal theorists about the nature of power and the role of states and social movements in facilitating and undoing neoliberalism's legal edifices. As a consequence, the foundations of transnational legality become more apparent and the mechanisms for change more transparent.




Proportionality, Reasonableness and Standards of Review in International Investment Law and Arbitration


Book Description

International investment law is one of the most dynamic fields of international law, and yet it has been criticised for failing to strike a fair balance between private and public interests. In this valuable contribution to the current debate, Valentina Vadi examines the merits and pitfalls of arbitral tribunals’ use of the concepts of proportionality and reasonableness to review the compatibility of a state’s regulatory actions with its obligations under international investment law.




International Investment Law and Comparative Public Law


Book Description

International investment law is one of fastest-growing areas of international law, but it is plagued by the vagueness of many investors' rights and unpredictable investment tribunal decisions. This books analyses international investment law through the lens of comparative public law to clarify investment treaty obligations and arbitral procedure.




Public Participation and Foreign Investment Law


Book Description

Public Participation and Foreign Investment Law critically discusses the different forms of public participation that can be found or envisaged in foreign investment law. It provides the first systematic treatment of public participation in foreign investment law in its main forms and from different perspectives.




State Liability in Investment Treaty Arbitration


Book Description

Today there are more than 2,500 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) around the world. Most of these investment protection treaties offer foreign investors a direct cause of action to claim damages against host-states before international arbitral tribunals. This procedure, together with the requirement of compensation in indirect expropriations and the fair and equitable treatment standard, have transformed the way we think about state liability in international law. We live in the BIT generation, a world where BITs define the scope and conditions according to which states are economically accountable for the consequences of regulatory change and administrative action. Investment arbitration in the BIT generation carries new functions which pose unprecedented normative challenges, such as the arbitral bodies established to resolve investor/state disputes defining the relationship between property rights and the public interest. They also review state action for arbitrariness, and define the proper tests under which that review should proceed. State Liability in Investment Treaty Arbitration is an interdisciplinary work, aimed at academics and practitioners, which focuses on five key dimensions of BIT arbitration. First, it analyses the past practice of state responsibility for injuries to aliens, placing the BIT generation in historical perspective. Second, it develops a descriptive law-and-economics model that explains the proliferation of BITs, and why they are all worded so similarly. Third, it addresses the legitimacy deficits of this new form of dispute settlement, weighing its potential advantages and democratic shortfalls. Fourth, it gives a comparative overview of the universal tension between property rights and the public interest, and the problems and challenges associated with liability grounded in illegal and arbitrary state action. Finally, it presents a detailed legal study of the current state of BIT jurisprudence regarding indirect expropriations and the fair and equitable treatment clause. This title is included in Bloomsbury Professional's International Arbitration online service.




Shifting Paradigms in International Investment Law


Book Description

International investment law is in transition. Whereas the prevailing mindset has always been the protection of the economic interests of individual investors, new developments in international investment law have brought about a paradigm shift. There is now more than ever before an interest in a more inclusive, transparent, and public regime. Shifting Paradigms in International Investment Law addresses these changes against the background of the UNCTAD framework to reform investment treaties. The book analyses how the investment treaty regime has changed and how it ought to be changing to reconcile private property interests and the state's duty to regulate in the public interest. In doing so, the volume tracks attempts in international investment law to recalibrate itself towards a more balanced, less isolated, and increasingly diversified regime. The individual chapters of this edited volume address the contents of investment agreements, the system of dispute settlement, the interrelation of investment agreements with other areas of public international law, constitutional questions, and new regional perspectives from Europe, South Africa, the Pacific Rim Region, and Latin America. Together they provide an invaluable resource for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. The individual chapters of this edited volume address the contents of investment agreements, the system of dispute settlement, the interrelation of investment agreements with other areas of public international law, constitutional questions, and new regional perspectives from Europe, South Africa, the Pacific Rim Region, and Latin America. Together they provide an invaluable resource for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.




International Investment Protection and Constitutional Law


Book Description

This book develops a conceptual framework that captures not only the tensions between constitutional values that are common to liberal democracies – human rights, democracy, and the rule of law – and the investment treaty regime, but also the potential for co-existence and complementarity.




Global Public Interest in International Investment Law


Book Description

Outlines a general theory of whether and how to include public interest concerns in the realm of international investment law.




Human Rights in International Investment Law and Arbitration


Book Description

This book offers a systematic analysis of the interaction between international investment law, investment arbitration and human rights, including the role of national and international courts, investor-state arbitral tribunals and alternative jurisdictions, the risks of legal and jurisdictional fragmentation, the human rights dimensions of investment law and arbitration, and the relationships of substantive and procedural principles of justice to international investment law.Part I summarizes the main conclusions of the 24 book chapters and places them into the broader context of the principles of justice, global administrative law and multilevel constitutionalism that may be relevant for the administration of justice in international economic law and investor-state arbitration. Part II includes contributions clarifying the constitutional dimensions of transnational investment disputes and investor-state arbitration, as reflected in the increasing number ofarbitral awards and amicus curiae submissions addressing human rights concerns. Part III addresses the need for principle-oriented ordering and the normative congruence of diverse national, regional and worldwide legal regimes, focusing on the pertinent dispute settlement practices and legal interpretationmethods of regional economic courts and human rights courts, which increasingly interpret international economic law with due regard to human rights obligations of the governments concerned.Part IV includes twelve case studies on the potential human rights dimensions of specific protection standards (e.g. fair and equitable treatment, non-discrimination), applicable law (e.g. national and international human rights law, rules on corporate social accountability), procedural law issues (e.g. amicus curiae submissions) and specific fundamental rights (e.g. the protection of human health, access to water, and protection of the environment). These case studies discuss not onlythe still limited examples of human rights discourse in investor-state arbitral awards; they also probe the potential legal relevance of investor-state arbitration for the judicial recognition, interpretation and balancing of primary rules, such as of investment law and human rights law, in the light of theprinciples of justice as defined by national and international law.