Fulvio Maria Palombino - Böcker

It is a settled rule of international law that a State may not rely on the provisions of its 'internal law' as justification for failing to comply with international obligations. However, the judiciaries of most countries, including those with a high record of compliance with international norms, have increasingly felt the need to preserve the area of fundamental principles, where the State's inclination to retain full sovereignty seems to act as an unbreakable 'counter-limit' to the limitations deriving from international law. This volume explores this trend by adopting a comparative perspective, addressing the question of how conflicts between international law and national fundamental principles are dealt with and resolved within a specific legal system. The contributing authors identify common tendencies and fundamental differences in the approaches and evaluate the implications of this practice for the future of the principle of supremacy of international law.

It is a settled rule of international law that a State may not rely on the provisions of its 'internal law' as justification for failing to comply with international obligations. However, the judiciaries of most countries, including those with a high record of compliance with international norms, have increasingly felt the need to preserve the area of fundamental principles, where the State's inclination to retain full sovereignty seems to act as an unbreakable 'counter-limit' to the limitations deriving from international law. This volume explores this trend by adopting a comparative perspective, addressing the question of how conflicts between international law and national fundamental principles are dealt with and resolved within a specific legal system. The contributing authors identify common tendencies and fundamental differences in the approaches and evaluate the implications of this practice for the future of the principle of supremacy of international law.

This book moves from the circumstance whereby currently the obligation to provide fair and equitable treatment (FET) to foreign investments is included in the majority of international investment agreements and has proved to be the most invoked standard in investor-State arbitration. Hence, it is no overstatement to describe this standard as the basic norm of international investment law. Yet both its meaning and normative basis continue to be shrouded in ambiguity and, as a consequence, to inspire a considerable number of interpretations by legal writers. The book's precise aim is to unravel such ambiguity, arguing from the idea that FET has become part of the fabric of general international law, but has done so by means of a source somewhat neglected in legal doctrine. This being the category of general principles peculiar to a certain field of international law, i.e. those principles having their own foundations in the international legal order itself, but which, through the mediation of the judge, end up being shaped according to the features typical of a specific normative field. The book, as well as having a solid theoretical backdrop as its basis, offers a careful and critical analysis of pertinent case law, and will prove useful to both scholars and practitioners.Fulvio Maria Palombino is Professor of International Law at the Law Department of the University of Naples Federico II and a member of the Executive Board of the European Society of International Law.Specific to this book:•Explains the ICSID practice clearly and concisely•Useful in practical termsExcerpts from a review:‘Fair and Equitable Treatment and the Fabric of General Principles’ is an original and well researched book, in which the author challenges a number of conventional wisdoms on FET.Among the strengths of the book one can mention the solid discussion of public international law principles relevant to FET and theinteresting incursions into domestic law legal systems which play an important role in the understanding of FET components such as due process, legitimate expectations or proportionality.In particular the section on promises provides a convincing analysis of the issues that arise when the administration makes an assurance or representation to an investor. Against the backdrop of the examination of unilateral acts under public international law, Palombino’s analysis sheds new light on what ought to be the proper scope of protection under the legitimate expectations doctrine in case of governmental promises, clarifying a number of points which have received insufficient attention by arbitral tribunals thus far.- Michele Potestà, Attorney with Lévy Kaufmann-Kohler, Geneva; Senior Researcher, Geneva Center for International Dispute Settlement (CIDS) book review in International and Comparative Law Quarterly, (2018) 67(4), 1036-1037. For thefull review, see: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020589318000246

This book makes a significant contribution to the comprehension of the law and practice of provisional measures issued by international courts and tribunals, including international commercial arbitration. After having analyzed the common features of provisional measures, it provides an overview of the peculiarities of these orders within the context of different international proceedings (e.g. the ICJ, the ITLOS, the CJEU, the ICC, human rights courts and investment arbitration).  In this regard, the book is valuable in offering a broad and rigorous comparative analysis between the various forms of provisional measures.Owing to its original cross-cutting and case-driven approach, the book will be an essential tool for both scholars and practitioners dealing with the law of provisional measures in international adjudication. Indeed, this book will be an important novelty in international law libraries due to the broad range of regimes scrutinized and to a detailedanalysis of the general trends within the contemporary law of provisional measures.Fulvio Maria Palombino is Professor of International Law in the Department of Law at the University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy.Roberto Virzo is Associate Professor of International Law in the Department of Law, Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods (DEMM) at the University of Sannio, Benevento, Italy.Giovanni Zarra is Adjunct Professor of International Law in the Department of Law at the University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy.