"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.

At the nexus between international investment law, climate law, and human rights law, States’ obligations to protect foreign investments clash with their right – or even their duty – to regulate to protect the planet and people. State efforts at climate change mitigation and adaptation have already triggered claims of liability under the investor-protection provisions of bilateral and multilateral investment treaties. In this comprehensive elaboration on the topic, stellar experts and practitioners describe different types of climate-related investment disputes, provide a thorough analysis of the unique procedural issues that emerge in such disputes, and evaluate the proper balance between States’ right to regulate to fight climate change and their obligations towards foreign investors. Each of the book’s contributions offers a penetrating perspective on this complex matter, touching on such aspects as the following: investment disputes arising from States’ climate measures or actions; whether and how states can file counterclaims against investors in such disputes; the appropriate role for climate science at various stages of arbitration; how to assess damages in cases involving fossil assets left stranded by the climate transition; and whether, on balance, existing international investment law supports or hinders the global energy transition. Along the way, arbitrators and other practitioners will gain insight into how to argue, defend, and assess climate-related investment disputes, using not only investment-treaty case law but also international climate agreements, human rights law, and environmental law. Policymakers are shown ways to design and implement climate policy and investment treaties in order to avoid claims by foreign investors. For policymakers, treaty and contract negotiators, dispute resolution lawyers, and international organizations, no other resource provides such incisive discussion of how to balance treaty-based investment protection against states’ inherent duty to regulate in the public interest.

This book provides a comprehensive account of the CETA Investment Chapter’s ability to overcome the legitimacy crisis facing investment arbitration. To do so, it first examines the root causes behind the legitimacy crisis, ultimately arguing that it reflects a fundamental rule of law crisis within investment arbitration. In particular, it asserts that the normative standpoints of the legitimacy crisis form part of the rule of law, the uniting legal principle from which the legitimacy concerns stem. The book contends that the rule of law is not only the principal normative and causal assumption on which the legitimacy concerns are based, but that it could also be utilized as a platform to evaluate the investment arbitration mechanism in CETA's Investment Chapter. Based on this, the book evaluates CETA's Investment Chapter through the rule of law framework in order to provide a convincing account of the latter's ability to overcome the legitimacy crisis facing investment arbitration. It concludes that CETA's Investment Chapter is unlikely to completely solve the legitimacy crisis simply because it is just a patchwork of reforms rather than a comprehensive reinvention of the substantive and procedural law of investment arbitration. Lastly, the book offers meaningful insights into the way the challenges presented by investment arbitration should be addressed. The book is intended for academics researching international investment law and arbitration as well as for policy-makers focusing on reforming investor-state dispute settlement.

"A textbook summary of how international investment law developed over the past fifty years may go something like this. States signed thousands of largely similar international investment agreements (IIAs) to protect the property of their investors abroad. Most of these IIAs allowed foreign investors to sue host states via investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) for treaty breaches. ISDS was barely used until the late 1990s. When ISDS claims finally surged, states realized that their treaties offered greater investment protection than intended. States reacted by narrowing the commitments offered in newly concluded agreements. This backlash against investment arbitration resulted in a "new generation" of IIAs that rebalanced investment protection and host state regulatory autonomy"--

The influence of international courts is ubiquitous, covering areas from the law of the sea to international criminal law. This judicialization of international law is often lauded for bringing effective global governance, upholding the rule of law, and protecting the right of individuals. Yet at what point does the omnipresence of the international judiciary shackle national sovereign freedom? And can the lack of political accountability be justified? Follesdal and Ulfstein bring together the crème de la crème of the legal academic world to ask the big questions for the international judiciary: whether they are there for mere dispute settlement or to set precedent, and how far they can enforce international obligations without impacting on democratic self-determination.

This book offers theoretical arguments and original empirical data on the legitimacy of the investor-state dispute settlement system in the eyes of the general public. The legitimacy of the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system has become a major issue in recent negotiations on new trade and investment agreements, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). This book considers the remarkable rise of investor-state arbitration, its politicization and the corresponding legitimacy crisis that has induced a political process of ISDS reform. The book applies theoretical arguments about legitimacy perceptions among the mass public and tests these arguments in survey experiments in Germany, France, and the United States to answer the question of whether ISDS reform can be successful. By showing that large parts of the population hold negative perceptions about the current system of private arbitration and believe that an international investment court and domestic courts are more legitimate dispute resolution systems, the book extends the debate on the legitimacy of the ISDS mechanism, which has so far been dominated by conflicting normative claims of supporters and critics. With regard to the academic debate about legitimacy in global governance, the author underlines that the legitimacy perceptions of ordinary citizens must be taken seriously to ensure the sustainability of global governance and international law in the long term. This book will be of interest to academics working in international relations, international political economy, international law, transnational law, authority, politicization, and legitimacy of global governance. It will also be of great use to practitioners in the field of international investment law, including lawyers, and government officials working in international dispute settlement.

A large amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) has been poured into Africa in recent decades and these investments can come with adverse effects on the environment, human rights, and development. At the same time, investment treaties, entered into by African states and aimed at promoting and protecting FDI, seriously limit those states' ability to regulate such activities in the interests of affected communities. Whilst these tensions have generated global debate, little attention has been paid to the legal status of many of these investment treaties, and whether - given their constitutional and customary international law obligations to act in the public interest - African states truly have the capacity to conclude treaties which contain standards of investment protection expressly preventing or unduly abridging the exercise of their regulatory authority. Focusing on this question, The Investment Treaty Regime and Public Interest Regulation in Africa presents The Imperatives Theory: a legal, normative, and principled framework for rethinking the legal status, making, and reform of investment treaties and investment dispute settlement in Africa, with relevant and significant implications for the global investment treaty regime.

This book addresses concerns with the international trade and investment dispute settlement systems from a statist perspective, at a time when multilateralism is deeply questioned by the forces of mega-regionalism and political and economic contestation. In covering recent case law and theoretical discussions, the book’s contributors analyze the particularities of statehood and the limitations of the dispute settlement systems to judge sovereign actors as autonomous regulators. From a democratic deficit coupled with a deficit of legitimacy in relation to the questionable professionalism, independence and impartiality of adjudicators to the lack of consistency of decisions challenging essential public policies, trade and investment disputes have proven controversial. These challenges call for a rethinking of why, how and what for, are States judged. Based on a “sovereignty modern” approach, which takes into account the latest evolutions of a globalized trade and investment law struggling to put people’s expectations at its core, the book provides a comprehensive framework and truly original perspective linking the various facets of “judicial activity” to the specific yet encompassing character of international law and the rule of law in international society. In doing so, it covers a large variety of issues such as global judicial capacity building and judicial professionalism from an international and domestic comparative angle, trade liberalisation and States' legitimate rights and expectations to protect societal values, the legal challenges of being a State claimant, the uses and misuses of imported legal concepts and principles in multidisciplinary adjudications and, lastly, the need to reunify international law on a (human) rights based approach.

A multi-disciplinary, multi-author analysis of convergence and divergence between trade and international dispute settlement.

Arbitration is a staple of international dispute resolution. Though the international community now has a plethora of courts and tribunals at its disposal, for numerous reasons international arbitration remains a central mechanism—perhaps even the central mechanism in third-party resolution of international commercial disputes. International Arbitration: Contemporary Issues and Innovations brings together some of the world’s most distinguished experts to examine important contemporary issues and trends in international arbitration. The volume offers a broad range of analysis beginning with current key procedural issues. Both Private and Public International Law are examined, including such topics as investor-state relations, arbitration in the law of the sea and human rights and investment arbitration.