Threading the Sovereign’s Needle

An investor-State tribunal enjoys significant authority once a dispute is referred to it. Among a tribunal’s unquestioned powers is the power to order interim relief—including with respect to the most sovereign of a State’s conduct: its enforcement of its criminal law. In exercising these powers, an investor-State tribunal goes beyond the role traditionally assigned to it—i.e. to award damages for prejudice caused by a treaty breach—and dictates sovereign conduct. While the applicable treaty, arbitral rules, or law of the seat may not offer specific instructions, arbitral tribunals deciding on such interim relief requests can rely on a significant body of case law. That case law reflects a coherent approach to a thorny question, even though outcomes may vary. This article will deconstruct that coherent approach—from the foundations of the tribunal’s authority to order interim relief in respect to pendant criminal proceedings, to the rights that such relief may protect, to the requirements for ordering such relief, as well the effect of such relief and its duration in addition to any recourse for non-compliance.

Investor State Arbitration in a Changing World Order

In Investor State Arbitration in a Changing World Order, the authors examine the sustained worldwide challenges to investor state arbitration arising from across the political spectrum. These challenges have led to extensive and thoughtful proposals for reform from the international arbitration community, domestic lawmakers, and international bureaucrats. These reforms play an important role in the continuous evolution of investor state arbitration, and will enhance the quality of justice rendered. However, the authors argue, these reforms are insufficient to resolve the domestic political challenges that investor state arbitration faces. Only political solutions that justify for broad populations the international flow of capital and the independent resolution of disputes arising therefrom can preserve the institution of investor state arbitration. Absent the more equitable distribution of the benefits associated with the international flow of capital, political support for investor state arbitration will remain tenuous, notwithstanding the significant de-escalatory benefits investor state arbitration offers.

Investors, States, and Arbitrators in the Crosshairs of International Investment Law and Environmental Protection

The global environmental disruption caused by human activity is firmly entrenched as a scientific fact. The present paper looks at the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system and inquires whether this is the most suitable transnational venue for resolving investment disputes that have an environmental component. This culminates essentially in whether arbitration is a legitimate forum and whether privately appointed arbitrators appropriately can resolve environmental-related disputes. These disputes are bound to increase in frequency because host-States are also partaking in global efforts to respond to environmental challenges. This paper makes several points. First, ISDS is the best equipped venue for addressing investment disputes that have an environmental or natural resources component. Second, the “regulatory chill” and the alleged “investor bias” arguments are unsubstantiated whereas, a balance must be struck between backlash, legitimacy, and workability. Third, ISDS will eventually and inevitably facilitate green-investors, while holding States accountable for green-undertakings, and therefore continue to effectively enforce the rule of law globally. Fourth, arbitrators must adapt to their role of handling disputes at the intersection of international investment law and environmental law; this means that a thorough thick rule of law must effectively be implemented. Fifth, International Investment Agreements (IIA s) should be reconsidered or interpreted in order to accommodate for investors’ obligations, as well as widening the scope of States’ regulatory powers. Finally, ISDS will only remain the best alternative if it sticks to its fundamental elements, in particular by utilizing the regime’s flexibility to allow counterclaims from host States. Only such reform-proposals that preserve and enhance the fundamental elements of international arbitration should be seriously considered.

Principles of Evidence in Public International Law as Applied by Investor-State Tribunals: Burden and Standards of Proof

Principles of Evidence in Public International Law as Applied by Investor-State Tribunals explores the fundamental principles of evidence and how these principles relating to burden of proof and standards of proof are derived.By tracing the applications of major principles recognized by the International Court of Justice and applied by investor-state tribunal jurisprudence, the authors offer valuable insight into the interpretation, understanding, and nuances of indispensable principles of evidence, an area that has been ignored in both investor-state arbitration and public international law more generally. Each principle is analyzed through historical and modern lenses to provide clarity and cohesion in understanding how fundamental principles of evidence will affect evidentiary dispositions of parties in investment arbitration and public international law cases.

Selecting and Removing Arbitrators in International Investment Arbitration

This book explores and assesses two essential features in investor state dispute resolution (ISDS): the selection and the removal of arbitrators. Both topics have received increasing scrutiny and criticism, that have in turn generated calls for reforms. In its first part, this book explains the selection of arbitrators procedurally and comparatively under the most-often used arbitration rules. It then reviews critically the necessary and desirable qualities for arbitrators’ selection and appointment, and addresses some important and related policy issues, such diversity and repeat appointments. Finally, it discusses the recent calls to review the methodologies used to appoint arbitrators, and specifically the proposal by the European Commission to create a permanent tribunal to resolve international investment disputes, the UNCITRAL Working Group III Reform Process and the rules amendment proposal undertaken by the Secretariat of the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID Secretariat). In its second part, the book addresses the companion and similarly important issue of challenging and removing arbitrators. It does so by reviewing first the provisions that are appplied under a variety of arbitration rules to remove arbitrators who fail to possess the necessary qualities to sit in arbitral proceedings. It then evaluates the reasons for challenge and discusses some important cases that addressed challenges. The book assesses appointments and removals in a multifaceted and comprehensive way, and includes a critical assessment of the reasons and calls for reform of the ISDS system.

Addressing Corruption Allegations in International Arbitration

In Addressing Corruption Allegations in International Arbitration, Brody K. Greenwald and Jennifer A. Ivers provide a comprehensive overview of the key issues that arise in international arbitrations involving allegations of corruption drawing upon their significant experience in these high-stakes cases, including in the only two reported investment treaty cases dismissed specifically as a result of corruption. Their monograph is a valuable resource guide that analyzes, among other things, the public policy against corruption, the requirements for establishing corruption, issues relating to the burden and standard of proof, how corruption has been proved in practice, and the legal consequences where corruption is established. Mr. Greenwald and Ms. Ivers also assess issues that arise where a sovereign State raises an arbitration defense based on alleged corruption, but does not prosecute the alleged wrongdoers in its domestic courts.

Damages in Investor-State Arbitration: Current Issues and Challenges

The assessment of damages in investor-state arbitration involves complex legal and economic considerations. Particular challenges arise from the interdisciplinary nature of this endeavor. The present issue discusses some of the pertinent specificities in investor-state disputes reflecting the tensions between sovereignty and self-determination of states and their legal obligations towards foreign investors. These tensions are primarily present in the context of expropriation, but also commitments undertaken by states in bilateral investment treaties and contracts as well as changing economic circumstances need to be taken into consideration. The lack of valuation principles that are uniformly accepted and implemented leads to uncertainty and unpredictability in practice. The present volume analyses some of the most controversial and unsettled issues, including the choice of the valuation date, appropriate valuation methods, moral damages, and the awarding of interest.

International Investment Law and Arbitration: History, Modern Practice, and Future Prospects

International Investment Law is one of the most dynamically growing fields of International Law as shown by the volume of Bilateral Investment Treaties (bits), and investment chapters in a growing numbers of regional and mega-regional trade agreements. This paper explores the origin, evolution and operation of International Investment Law. It discusses the main actors, the protections afforded to foreign investments and investors, and the content of modernbits. The legal issues and challenges International Investment Law faces today are brought into perspective. Particularly, this paper provides an assessment of the measures put forth by the European Union aimed at transforming the traditional investor-State arbitration system to an Investment Court System. An examination of thenaftare-negotiations is also presented, including the impact thatceta, a trade deal between theeuand Canada could have in the outcome of the current re-negotiations.

Jurisdiction and Admissibility in Investment Arbitration: The Practice and the Theory

This is the first half of a two-part essay on jurisdiction and admissibility in investment arbitration. It focuses on the arbitration practice, whilst the second part sets these concepts in the wider framework of public international law litigation. This essay maps the objections to the tribunal’s jurisdiction (byratio: materiae, temporis, lociandpersonae) and the claim’s admissibility. It offers some preliminary conclusions: in certain areas there still is no consensus; tribunals are inclined to characterise objections as jurisdictional, and rarely resort to admissibility; findings of inadmissibility draw a judgment on the claimant or the claim’s propriety (whilst jurisdictional decisions typically eschew value-judgment); tribunals failed to distinguish jurisdiction from admissibility. These findings are further explored, within a wider theoretical context, in the second part of the essay.

Fair and Equitable Treatment: Its Interaction with the Minimum Standard and Its Customary Status

The book addresses two questions which have been debated by scholars in the last 20 years regarding the fair and equitable treatment (‘fet’) standard found inbits. It examines the interaction between the ‘minimum standard of treatment’ (mst) and thefetstandard. It first analyses the fascinating story of how the concept of themstemerged in the early 20th Century, its subsequent decline from 1960s until the 1990s and its surprising recent ‘resurrection’ in the year 2000. This evolution has had a direct impact on the emergence and subsequent development of thefetstandard and explains why States started referring to that standard instead of themstin their investment treaties. One question addressed in this book, is whetherfetis an autonomous standard of protection to be accorded to foreign investors, or is a mere reference to themstunder customary international law. Given the fact that thefetstandard is found in the overwhelming majority ofbits, another question which arose is whether or not it should now be considered in and of itself as a rule of customary international law.