In recent years, concerns have arisen in investor-state arbitration with regard to the magnitude of the decision-making power allocated to investment treaty tribunals. This book explores whether the use of analogies can improve the functioning of such arbitration, and how such analogies might be drawn.

This book poses a question that is deceptive in its simplicity: could international law have been otherwise? Today, there is hardly a serious account left that would consider the path of international law to be necessary, and that would refute the possibility of a different law altogether. But behind every possibility of the past stands a reason why the law developed as it did. Only with a keen sense of why things turned out the way they did is it possible to argue about how the law could plausibly have turned out differently. The search for contingency in international law is often motivated, as it is in this volume, by a refusal to resign to the present state of affairs. By recovering past possibilities, this volume aims to inform projects of transformative legal change for the future. The book situates that search for contingency theoretically and carries it into practice across many fields, with chapters discussing human rights and armed conflict, migrants and refugees, the sea and natural resources, foreign investments and trade. In doing so, it shows how politically charged questions about contingency have always been.

This book provides a comprehensive study of the standard of ‘full protection and security’ (FPS) in international investment law. Ever since the Germany-Pakistan BIT of 1959, almost every investment agreement has included an FPS clause. FPS claims refer to the most diverse factual settings, from terrorist attacks to measures concerning concession contracts. Still, the FPS standard has received far less scholarly attention than other obligations under international investment law. Filling that gap, this study examines the evolution of FPS from its medieval roots to the modern age, delimits the scope of FPS in customary international law, and analyzes the relationship between FPS and the concept of due diligence in the law of state responsibility. It additionally explores the interpretation and application of FPS clauses, drawing particular attention to the diverse wording used in investment treaties, the role ascribed to custom, and the interplay between FPS and other treaty-based standards. Besides delivering a detailed analysis of the FPS standard, this book also serves as a guide to the relevant sources, providing an overview of numerous legal instruments, examples of state practice, arbitral decisions, and related academic publications about the standard.

International investment law is one of the fastest growing areas of international law. It has led to the signing of thousands of agreements, mostly in the form of investment contracts and bilateral investment treaties. Also, in the last two decades, there has been an exponential growth in the number of disputes being resolved by investment arbitration tribunals. Yet the legal principles at the basis of international investment law and arbitration remain in a state of flux. Perhaps the best illustration of this phenomenon is the wide disagreement among investment tribunals on some of the core concepts underpinning the regime, such as investment, property, regulatory powers, scope of jurisdiction, applicable law, or the interactions with other areas of international law. The purpose of this book is to revisit these conceptual foundations in order to shed light on the practice of international investment law. It is an attempt to bridge the growing gap between the theory and the practice of this thriving area of international law. The first part of the book focuses on the 'infrastructure' of the investment regime or, more specifically, on the structural arrangements that have been developed to manage foreign investment transactions and the potential disputes arising from them. The second part of the book identifies the common conceptual bases of an array of seemingly unconnected practical problems in order to clarify the main stakes and offer balanced solutions. The third part addresses the main sources of 'regime stress' as well as the main legal mechanisms available to manage such challenges to the operation of the regime. Overall, the book offers a thorough investigation of the conflicting theoretical positions underlying international investment law, testing their worth by reference to concrete issues that have arisen in the jurisprudence. It demonstrates that many of the most important practical questions arising in practice can be addressed by a carefully dosed resort to theory.

Historiographical approaches in international investment law scholarship are becoming ever more important. This insightful book combines perspectives from a range of expert international law scholars who explore ways in which using a broad variety of methods in historical research can lead to a better understanding of international investment law.

Is a State free to adopt measures to protect the public health of its citizens? If so, what are the limits, if any, to such regulatory powers? This book addresses these questions by focusing on the clash between the regulatory autonomy of the state and international investment governance. As a wide variety of state regulations allegedly aimed at protecting public health may interfere with foreign investments, a tension exists between the public health policies of the host state and investment treaty provisions. Under most investment treaties, States have waived their sovereign immunity, and have agreed to give arbitrators a comprehensive jurisdiction over what are essentially regulatory disputes. Some scholars and practitioners have expressed concern regarding the magnitude of decision-making power allocated to investment treaty tribunals. This book contributes to the current understanding of international investment law and arbitration, addressing the fundamental question of whether public health has and/or should have any relevance in contemporary international investment law and policy. With a focus on the ‘clash of cultures’ between international investment law and public health, the author critically analyses the emerging case law of investment treaty arbitration and considers the theoretical interplay between public health and investor rights in international investment law. The book also explores the interplay between investment law and public health in practice, focusing on specific sectors such as pharmaceutical patents, tobacco regulation and environmental health. It then goes on to analyze the available means for promoting consideration of public health in international investment law and suggests new methods and approaches to better reconcile public health and investor rights.

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.

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.

Coherence is highly valued in law. It is especially sought after in investor-state dispute settlement, where charges of incoherence in arbitral awards have long been raised by states and scholars. Yet coherence is a largely underexplored notion in international law. Often, it is treated as a mere ideal to strive towards or simply as a different way to describe the legal consistency of judicial outcomes. This book takes a different approach. It sees coherence as an independent concept having two dimensions: a substantive and a methodological one. Both are critically important for legal reasoning by international courts and tribunals, including by investor-state tribunals, and the book illustrates through several case studies some of the ways this conclusion is borne out in practice. A fuller understanding of coherence in international law has implications for our understanding of the concept of law, the practice of legal reasoning, and judicial professional ethics.