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.

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

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.

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.

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 fully revised and updated edition of International Investment Law remains a complete and concise guide to the law of international investment protection and continues to approach the subject with an easy-to-follow, broad and balanced text. New to this edition: - updates to include numerous new cases - completely reworked sections on standards of treatment - new Q&A section to capture practitioner views. Key Features: • balance of cases and explanatory comment familiarises students with reading opinions and enables them to grasp the core concepts at stake • concise – suitable for one-semester course for non-specialists or as a first text for students who will take further specialised courses in the area • excerpts from the most influential arbitration decisions outline differing interpretations and ensure students don’t learn in a theoretical vacuum • questions throughout encourage readers to come to their own opinions.

This book analyzes the tension between the host state’s commitment to provide regulatory stability for foreign investors – which is a tool for attracting FDI and generating economic growth – and its evolving non-economic commitments towards its citizens with regard to environmental protection and social welfare. The main thesis is that the ‘stabilization clause/regulatory power antinomy,’ as it appears in many cases, contradicts the content and rationale of sustainable development, a concept that is increasingly prevalent in national and international law and which aims at the integration and balancing of economic, environmental, and social development. To reconcile this antinomy at the decision-making and dispute settlement levels, the book employs a ‘constructive sustainable development approach,’ which is based on the integration and reconciliation imperatives of the concept of sustainable development as well as on the application of principles of law such as non-discrimination, public purpose, due process, proportionality, and more generally, good governance and rule of law. It subsequently re-conceptualizes stabilization clauses in terms of their design (ex-ante) and interpretation (ex-post), yielding stability to the benefit of foreign investors, while also mitigating their negative effects on the host state’s power to regulate.

The strengths of international investment law - above all, a strong focus on investor interests and an effective adjudication and enforcement system - also entail its weaknesses: it runs the danger of impeding or even sanctioning the host states' legitimate regulatory interests and ignoring other fields of public international law. How does it cope with public interest concerns such as human rights, the environment or the fight against corruption? At the heart of this book lies a fresh approach towards a general theory of such global public interest considerations in the investment realm. Delineating how and why those considerations matter, and why the current system does not accommodate them properly, Andreas Kulick fleshes out general principles and customary international law as defences the host state may raise against alleged investor rights infringements and promotes proportionality as the appropriate balancing mechanism.

Due to the ongoing recent expansion of public interest issues worldwide, the state’s right to regulate has been recaptured as a prominent concept in international investment law. The fair and equitable treatment (FET) standard provision in the text of an international investment agreement (IIA) has become a detailed clause clarifying the specific obligations of a state towards an investor under the FET standard. However, striking the right balance between the interests of host states and investors in these new treaty formulations has proved to be challenging. This book greatly clarifies the field by offering the in-depth analysis of the application of the state’s right to regulate in relation to FET standard provisions in IIAs and to decisions by arbitral tribunals in FET cases. Recognising that the role of tribunals is to balance the state’s public interests and the interests of the investor when interpreting and applying the FET standard, the author pursues such seminal issues and topics as the following: the legitimacy of the objective of the state’s measure; obligations and responsibilities of investors towards a host state; the nature and impact of a change to a national regulatory framework; special economic and sociopolitical circumstances in a host state; and due diligence and risk assessment as a condition for the protection of an investor’s legitimate expectations. Multiple IIAs concluded by the OECD Member States, as well by Russia and China between the developing countries, and the prominent investment law cases on the FET standard are examined in detail. The analysis pays particular attention to how investment jurisprudence in FET cases has been reflected in such new IIAs as the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the European Union (EU) and Canada (CETA), the EU-Vietnam FTA and the EU-Singapore FTA. These case studies demonstrate the evolution of the IIAs’ FET standard provisions and how they balance the application of the FET standard and the state’s right to regulate. Suggestions are provided for drafting formulations of the FET standard that can contribute to achieving such a balance. In the clear light it sheds on the legal conditions under which states may regulate in the public interest and its contribution to the reforms that are currently taking place in the field of international investment law, this book constitutes an exemplary framework to evaluate investment decisions on the FET standard and the right to regulate. It is sure to prove extremely useful for practitioners who work on investment cases, policymakers involved in negotiating and drafting of IIAs, policy advisors of governmental and non-governmental organisations and academics in international investment law.

Transnational investment involves a variety of actors (States, public and private legal entities, and natural persons) whose relationships are governed by rules and legal instruments belonging to different legal systems. This book provides a systematic study of the sources of rights and obligations in the field of transnational investment, and their coordination and interaction. It focuses primarily on the network of over 3,000 Bilateral Investment Treaties, international investment contracts, customary international law, the main multilateral treaties, national legislation, international case law and general principles of law. The book, firmly based on State practice, arbitral awards and national decisions, is indispensable to fully appraise the nature and content of the claims of private investors as well as to identify the law applicable in investment arbitration.