Arbitrating The Conduct Of International Investors

This volume shows how investment arbitration may be reformed to achieve both increased investment flows and improved access to justice.

Often derided for its asymmetry, this book shows how investors can be held to account in international investment law.

This book examines the issue of foreign investor misconduct in modern international investment law, focusing on the approach that international investment law as it currently operates has developed towards foreign investor misconduct. The term ‘misconduct’ is not a legal notion, but is used to describe a certain phenomenon, namely, a group/class of actions. This term is convenient since it makes it possible to introduce and describe the phenomenon as such, without a division into concrete types of conduct, like ‘abuse of process’, ‘violation of national law’, ‘corruption’, ‘investment contrary to international norms and standards’, etc. The term ‘misconduct’ is intended to embrace various kinds of conduct on the part of foreign investors that the system of international investment law does not accept – such as that which it regards as illegal, against public policy, or otherwise inappropriate – and triggers legal consequences. Rarely, however, does international investment law clearly articulate what it considers unacceptable investor conduct, and certainly not in any systematic fashion. As such, this book addresses the following questions: What types of investors’ conduct are legally unacceptable? What mechanisms are available to deal with unacceptable investors’ conduct, and what are the legal consequences?

Offers the most comprehensive, detailed and up-to-date analysis of international investment law and arbitration compared to its competitors.

International Investment Law and Arbitration: History, Modern Practice, and Future Prospects explores international law on foreign investment: its creation, functioning and evolution.

Investor-state arbitration is a relatively new dispute settlement mechanism that allows foreign investors the opportunity to seek redress for damages arising out of breaches of investment-related treaty obligations by the governments of host countries. Claims are submitted to independent, international arbitration tribunals, which are called upon to interpret the treaty at hand. Because of the public interest involved in these cases, the awards of these tribunals are subject to much scrutiny and debate. Thus, it has already generated hundreds of cases and created new legal disciplines, inspiring a continuous string of legal writings. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the main issues that arise in investor-state arbitration. It accompanies the reader through the phases of such a procedure, starting with an examination of the instruments, which provide, in the overwhelming majority of the cases, the legal basis for the requests for such arbitration. It then continues with the launching of the arbitration procedure, followed by the analysis of the main jurisdictional and substantive issues that the tribunals are confronted with, and the review procedures, when there is a request for setting aside of the award. It finally looks at the post-award phase and concludes with a reflection on the role of precedent in investment arbitration. Arbitration under International Investment Agreements: a Guide to the Key Issues contains in one volume what everybody needs to know on this evolving topic. Calling on the most renowned experts in this field, private practitioners, academics, government and international organization officials, it describes the process in all its phases from A to Z, providing a comprehensive insight in the way investor-state arbitration works from the perspective of the main actors involved. Its analyses of all key aspects of the topic are pragmatic and reliable.

Although a State’s treatment of foreign investors has long been regulated by international law, it is only recently that international investment law has emerged as an independent discipline in its own right. In recent decades the practical success of investment arbitration has allowed international investment law to develop both its own cadre of academic and professional specialists and its own legal doctrines. This book analyses the structure of international investment law, as it has developed through the practice of investment arbitration in order to see how a variety of international investment law doctrines should be understood and applied. The book demonstrates how a structural analysis can shed light on several major controversies within investment law and also examines what an "investment" actually is. The book offers an original interpretative approach to the resolution of problems in international investment law, and so is one of the few books within the field to attempt to give investment law a solid theoretical basis. It also focuses on only a select number of problems, rather than attempting to deliver the universal coverage currently popular for investment law books. As a result, those issues that are addressed get a detailed discussion rarely available in competing texts.

Domestic law often plays an important role in investment treaty arbitration, but how it should be addressed is unclear. Drawing on case law, international law principles, and comparative analysis, this book sets out a framework for engaging with domestic law.