Volume 12 of the EYIEL focuses on “The Future of Dispute Settlement in International Economic Law”. While new forms of dispute settlement are emerging, others are in deep crisis. The volume starts off with reflections on Dispute Settlement and the World Trade Organisation, most prominently the crisis of the Appellate Body, but also addressing international intellectual property law and the African Continental Free Trade Area. This is followed by a section on Dispute Settlement and Investment Protection/International Investment Law, which includes articles on the summary dismissal of claims, the margin of appreciation doctrine, the use of conciliation to settle sovereign debt disputes, and contract-based arbitration in light of Achmea and Hagia Sophia at ICSID. Further contributions consider the emerging role of commercial courts, the dejudicialization of international economic law, dispute settlement in the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement, reference mechanisms in dispute resolution clauses, and UNCLOS.

Foreign investors benefit from investment protection standards in international investment law which are enforceable in investment arbitration. However, international law does not directly bind foreign investors and investment arbitration struggles to address foreign investor misconduct. Thus, host States cannot easily claim against foreign investors for breaches of international law in investment arbitration. In Counterclaims in Investment Arbitration, Edward Guntrip illustrates how host States can use counterclaim procedures in investment arbitration to hold foreign investors accountable for misconduct that breaches international law. Based on arbitral practice, the book sets out how host States can amend their State practice and litigation strategies to enhance the effectiveness of counterclaim procedures and assesses when host States should take this course of action.

How might law address the multiple crises of meaning intrinsic to global crises of climate, poverty, mass displacements, ecological breakdown, species extinctions and technological developments that increasingly complicate the very notion of 'life' itself? How can law embrace — in other words —the 'posthuman' condition — a condition in which non-human forces such as climate change and Covid-19 signal the impossibility of clinging to the existing imaginaries of Western legal systems and international law? This carefully curated book addresses these and related questions, bringing 'law beyond the human' (drawing on Indigenous legalities, life ways and ontologies) and New Materialist and Posthuman/ist approaches into stimulating proximity to each other.