The Origins of International Investment Law

Kate Miles is a Fellow and College Lecturer in Law at Gonville and Caius, University of Cambridge. She currently serves on the International Law Association's New Study Group on the Role of Soft Law Instruments in International Investment Law. She is also a Research Fellow of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law, Montreal, and co-ordinates the International Investment Law Network for the Society of International Economic Law.

'Kate Miles's monograph is one of the most important contemporary contributions to the field of investment law … Miles's assembly of a wide range of historical and doctrinal material is an interpretive and constitutive act intended to change the field and not merely reflect it.' Michael Fakhri, Journal of International Economic Law

• Introduction; Part I. Historical Evolution of Foreign Investment Protection Law: 1. Origins of international investment law; 2. 'The dynamic of a politically oriented law': foreign investment protection in a changing political environment; Part II. Contemporary Interaction: Foreign Investment, Imperialism and Environmental Protection: 3. Polarisation of positions; 4. Hints at synergy; Part III. Foreign Investment Law, Practices and Policy: Future Trends: 5. Transformation in international law: applying developments to foreign investment; 6. Paths towards a reconceptualised international law on foreign investment; 7. Conclusion: patterns of power in international investment law.