Download or read book Investment Treaty Arbitration and Public Law written by Gus Van Harten and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2008 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent explosion of investment treaty arbitration marks a revolutionary change in both international and public law, above all because it demonstrates how states have unwittingly privatized key powers of the courts in public law. This book outlines investment treaty arbitration as a public law system, by precisely demonstrating the significance of giving arbitrators comprehensive jurisdiction to decide regulatory disputes between business and state. In doing so, it exposes some startling consequences of transplanting rules of commercial arbitration into the regulatory sphere. First, private arbitrators can award compensation to investors in ways that go well beyond domestic systems of state liability in public law. Second, these awards can be enforced in as many as 165 countries, making them more widely enforceable than other judicial decisions in public law. Third, public law can be interpreted in private as a matter of course, without any appeal to a court to correct errors of law. The conflict between private arbitration and public law poses a serious challenge to open and accountable judging. But the critical flaw of the system - hitherto neglected - is its threat to judicial independence based on security of tenure. Under investment treaties, business claims against the state are decided by privately-contracted adjudicators, who win appointments only as more claims are brought. Thus, as the book explains, the 'judge' has a financial stake in how public law is interpreted and in the outcome of the dispute. While it is laudable to use international adjudication to resolve controversial disputes, the benefits of a global economy are no excuse for corrupting our historic tradition of independent courts.
Download or read book Investment Treaty Arbitration and Public Law written by Gus Van Harten and published by Oxford Monographs in Internati. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent explosion of investment treaty arbitration marks a major transformation of both international and public law, above all because of the manner in which states have delegated core powers of the courts to private arbitrators. This book outlines investment treaty arbitration as a public law system and demonstrates how it goes beyond all other forms of international adjudication in giving arbitrators a comprehensive jurisdiction to determine the legality of sovereign acts, and to award public funds to businesses that sustain loss as a result of government regulation. The analysis also reveals some startling consequences of transplanting rules of commercial arbitration into the regulatory sphere. For instance, the system allows public law to be interpreted by arbitrators in private as a matter of course, with limited scope for judicial review. Further, arbitrators can award compensation to investors in ways that go beyond domestic systems of state liability, and these awards may then be enforced in as many as 165 countries, making them more widely enforceable than any other adjudicative decision in public law. The system's mixture of private arbitration and public law undermines accountability and openness in judicial decision-making. But, most importantly, it poses a unique and fundamental challenge, neglected by other commentators - to the principle of judicial independence. To address this, this book argues that the system be replaced with an international investment court, properly constituted according to public law principles, and made up of tenured judges.
Download or read book Investment Treaty Arbitration and Public Law by Gus Van Harten written by Scott Shackelford and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For most of the twentieth century, international courts and tribunals rarely enjoyed blanket jurisdiction over foreign nationals. This has changed with the advent of 'investment treaty arbitrations.' Investment treaty arbitration is a treaty-based regime that uses rules and structures of international law and private arbitration to make governmental choices regarding the regulatory relationship between investors and the state (p. 8). Although tribunals exist around the world, the primary and most public arena for investment-treaty arbitration is the World Bank's Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The body has experienced a fourteen-fold spike in arbitrations since the mid-1990s, with cases centering on the former communist block and Latin America. Unlike international commercial arbitration or inter-state adjudication, investment-treaty arbitration involves at its heart the regulatory conduct of states. It allows, for the first time in world history, for independent tribunals to check sovereigns' regulatory power through installing individualized regimes of state liability for failing to treat investments within certain norms (p. 103). This is not possible in customary international law or in most treaty regimes such as in humanitarian or environmental law. States as a general rule are extremely reluctant to delegate to supranational institutions the power to be a check on their regulatory authority. This naturally begs the question as to why states have voluntarily acquiesced to have their sovereignty checked through investment treaty arbitrations. Gus Van Harten attempts to answer this fundamental question in Investment Treaty Arbitration and Public Law, as well as to assess the essential character and significance of this new system in public international law. His analysis includes four primary parts: a case study demonstrating the core questions of public law that arbitrators now regularly decide; a chronology of the development of investment-treaty arbitration; a discussion of why states have assented to the creation of these tribunals; and an explication exploring why investment-treaty arbitration is such a revolutionary development in international law. These arguments will be addressed in kind, followed by three critiques of the book along with suggestions for reform.
Download or read book Sovereign Choices and Sovereign Constraints written by Gus Van Harten and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-10-03 with total page 1063 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investment arbitrators rely on sovereignty for their legal status just as investor-state disputes usually stem from disagreements about the role of the state in society. As a result, investment arbitration is a vehicle for the exercise of sovereign authority and a site for contesting sovereign choices. This book investigates and evaluates the decision-making record and policy trajectory of international investment arbitration, from theoretical, doctrinal, and empirical perspectives. It analyses the extent to which the system used to resolve disputes impacts on the role of government, affecting diverse constituencies, as opposed to limiting itself to case-specific disputes between a single business enterprise and state entity. The book provides a comprehensive review of known awards in order to determine the types of government measures that have triggered disputes. It investigates how investment arbitrators have exercised their authority in recent case law. It provides a review of the approaches adopted in the reasoning of investment treaty tribunals on questions of judicial deference and respect for sovereign decision-makers. In doing so, it determines whether investment tribunals have taken a predominantly assertive approach to investor protection, without regard to their relative lack of accountability, capacity, or proximity in some cases. This approach does not sit comfortably with the relative restraint seen by domestic and international courts in similar contexts. The book argues that the unique characteristics of investment treaty arbitration make the experience of domestic judicial review more pertinent to international investment arbitration than to any other contexts for international adjudication. However, it argues that mediating devices in some form should be incorporated into the process in order to solve the tension between the extensive scope and potency of international investment arbitration as an important site of global governance, and the challenges of the review function in reviewing decisions which have strong claims to having comprehensive regulatory expertise, inclusive decision-making, electoral or other public accountability, or greater proximity to the underlying facts and context. Online Appendices
Download or read book International Investment Law and Comparative Public Law written by Stephan W. Schill and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-14 with total page 922 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Trouble with Foreign Investor Protection written by Gus Van Harten and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-30 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governments are rightly discussing reform of investment treaties, and of the incredibly powerful system of 'investor-state dispute settlement' (ISDS) upon which they rest. At their core, ISDS treaties are flawed because they very firmly institute wealth-based inequality under international law. In this book, Van Harten explores these claims in the light of the history of early ISDS treaties showing their ties to decolonization and, at times, extreme violence and authoritarianism. Focusing on early ISDS lawsuits and rulings, it is revealed how a small group of lawyers and arbitrators worked to create the legal foundations for massive growth of ISDS since 2000. ISDS-based protections are examined in detail to demonstrate how they give exceptional advantages to the wealthy. Various examples are also offered of how the protections have been used to reconfigure state decision-making and shift sovereign minds in favour of foreign investors. Lastly, the ongoing efforts of governments to reform ISDS are surveyed, with a call to go further or, best of all, to withdraw from the treaties. This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to know more about the shady world of investment protection.
Download or read book The Evolving International Investment Regime written by Jose E. Alvarez and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-19 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the growth of the global economy over the past two decades, foreign direct investment (FDI) laws, at both the national and international levels, have undergone rapid development in order to strengthen the protection standards for foreign investors. In terms of international investment law, a network of international investment agreements has arisen as a way to address FDI growth. FDI backlash, reflective of more restrictive regulation, has also emerged. The Evolving International Investment Regime analyzes the existing challenges to the international investment regime, and addresses these challenges going forward. It also examines the dynamics of the international regime, as well as a broader view of the changing global economic reality both in the United States and in other countries. The content for the book is a compendium of articles by leading thinkers, originating from the International Investment Conference "What's New in International Investment Law and Policy?"
Download or read book The Legitimacy of Investment Arbitration written by Daniel Behn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-13 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International investment arbitration remains one of the most controversial areas of globalisation and international law. This book provides a fresh contribution to the debate by adopting a thoroughly empirical approach. Based on new datasets and a range of quantitative, qualitative and computational methods, the contributors interrogate claims and counter-claims about the regime's legitimacy. The result is a nuanced picture about many of the critiques lodged against the regime, whether they be bias in arbitral decision-making, close relationships between law firms and arbitrators, absence of arbitral diversity, and excessive compensation. The book comes at a time when several national and international initiatives are under way to reform international investment arbitration. The authors discuss and analyse how the regime can be reformed and ow a process of legitimation might occur.
Download or read book The Backlash Against Investment Arbitration written by Michael Waibel and published by Kluwer Law International B.V.. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book, the outgrowth of a conference organized by the editors at Harvard Law School on April 19, 2008, aims to uncover the drivers behind the backlash against the current international investment regime."--Library of Congress Online Calalog.
Download or read book International Investment Law and Arbitration written by Borzu Sabahi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International Investment Law and Arbitration: History, Modern Practice, and Future Prospects explores international law on foreign investment: its creation, functioning and evolution.
Download or read book Shifting Paradigms in International Investment Law written by Steffen Hindelang and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-22 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Domestic Law in International Investment Arbitration written by Jarrod Hepburn and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although domestic law plays an important role in investment treaty arbitration, this issue is little discussed or analysed. When should investment treaty tribunals engage with domestic law? How should investment treaty tribunals resolve matters of domestic law? These questions have significant ramifications for both the legitimacy of the investment treaty system and the arbitral mandate of the tribunal members. Drawing on case law, international law principles, and comparative analysis, this book addresses these important issues. Part I of the book examines three areas of investment law-the 'fair and equitable treatment' standard, expropriation, and remedies-in which the role of domestic law has so far been under-appreciated. It argues that tribunals are justified in drawing on domestic law as a relevant factor in their rulings on these three issues. Part II of the book examines how questions of domestic law should be resolved in investment arbitration. It proposes a normative framework for use by tribunals in ascertaining the contents of the domestic law to be applied. It then considers counter-arguments, exemptions, and exceptions to applying this framework, and it evaluates how tribunals have ruled on questions of domestic law to date. Investment treaty arbitration has endured much criticism in recent times, partly over fears of its encroachment on sovereignty. The book ultimately contends that closer attention by tribunals to one of the principal expressions of a state's sovereignty-the elaboration of its domestic law-will reduce criticism of the field.
Download or read book Contributory Fault and Investor Misconduct in Investment Arbitration written by Martin Jarrett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often derided for its asymmetry, this book shows how investors can be held to account in international investment law.
Download or read book Investment Treaty Arbitration and International Law Volume 8 written by Ian A. Laird and published by Juris Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2015-03-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains the papers and proceedings of the eighth annual Juris Conference addressing new developments in investment treaty arbitration with a focus on the fundamental issues that have drawn some of the greatest controversies in the jurisprudence over the past few years. The four topics addressed in this book include: Challenges to Arbitrators: Should the Challenge Process Be Overhauled?New Developments in Definition of "Investment": What Is the Role of the Concept of "Property" in Investment Arbitration?Is Investment Treaty Arbitration a Mechanism to Second-guess Governments' Exercise of Administrative Discretion: Public Law or Lex Investoria?Awarding Damages: Proportionality, Contributory Fault, and Arbitral Tribunals' Discretion or Toss of a Coin? Contributors: Meriam N. Alrashid Paul Barker Julie Bédard Alexander Bĕlohlávek Amal Bouchenaki Mark N. Bravin Kate Brown de Vejar Julián Cárdenas Garcia Tina Cicchetti Robert A. DeRise Paolo Di Rosa James Egerton-Vernon Timothy L. Foden George K. Foster John Y. Gotanda George Kahale III Jonathan S. Kallmer Joshua Karton Matthew S. Kronby Pablo D. López Zadicoff Juan Felipe Merizalde Urdaneta Craig Miles Caline Mouawad Timothy G. Nelson Michael Nolan Eloïse Obadia Sirshar Qureshi Charles E. Roh Charles B. Rosenberg Margarita R. Sánchez Matthew D. Slater Fernando A. Tupa Janet M. Whittaker
Download or read book Rethinking Investment Law written by David Schneiderman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is no denying that the rules and enforcement mechanisms of investment law and arbitration reach deep into the regulatory and policy space of host states. Investment tribunals have the ability to second-guess all variety of state measures and, in doing so, have displayed a remarkable lack of restraint. Despite investment law's muscularity, without equal in international law, the prevailing orthodoxy treats investment law as a defensible and just restraint on government and politics. This volume helps to correct the prevailing view. Rethinking Investment Law illustrates how investment law protections for foreign investors constrains states and over-compensates investors. It offers a more balanced vision of how international law can protect all those affected, not just foreign investors. An expert set of contributors explain both the conventional law and its limitations. Their analysis shows that doctrines, now widely entrenched, in orthodox accounts of investment law could have taken, and could still take, a different turn. They offer a more respectful approach to states' roles and responsibilities to enact laws in the public interest. This text will be an illuminating read for students and academics in areas such as investment law and international economic law. It provides cutting-edge analysis for researchers, practitioners, and students seeking to understand and question the usual standards of treatment under investment treaties.
Download or read book Sold Down the Yangtze written by Gus Van Harten and published by James Lorimer & Company. This book was released on 2015-08-13 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When legal experts finally saw the terms of the investment deal Canada had signed with China, they could hardly believe what their eyes. The deal was unprecedented -- Canada had never given so much away to a trading partner. But Ottawa did not allow a full public review, and ultimately ratified the deal in 2014 with no changes. And the government moved forward with other trade deals that contain many of the same flaws. In this book, investment treaty expert Gus Van Harten offers the first-ever independent take on the details of the China-Canada investment deal and what it means for Canadians. Many of the deal's provisions are so extreme that readers may find it almost impossible to believe that the Canadian government agreed to them. He explains how this agreement, and others like it, give multinational corporations and rich investors superpowers over governments. Secretive courts staffed by private lawyers, not judges, are able to order governments to pay these investors billions for policies and decisions they object to. In simple language and easy to follow analysis, Van Harten offers a window into this secretive and obscure world. He documents the many ways Canadians lose out in the China-Canada deal, and how taxpayers may find themselves footing the bill for billions of dollars to Chinese investors who object to the actions of democratically-elected municipal, provincial and federal governments. This deal -- in place for a minimum 15 years -- includes terms that may well turn up in other trade and investment agreements. Gus Van Harten offers practical steps for a better, more informed public debate on this vital topic.
Download or read book Investment Treaty Arbitration as Public International Law written by Eric De Brabandere and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates how the public international law character of investment treaty arbitration has impacted on the dispute settlement procedure.
