Brill Research Perspectives in International Investment Law and Arbitration – serie

International Investment Law and Arbitration: History, Modern Practice, and Future Prospects explores international law on foreign investment: its creation, functioning and evolution. Particularly, this paper presents a roadmap over the historical context within which investor-State arbitration developed. It provides an overview of the main actors, the protections afforded to foreign investors, the content of modern BITs, and the challenges facing the system today.

The fair and equitable treatment (‘FET’) standard is a type of protection found in BITs which has become in the last decades one of the most controversial provisions examined by arbitral tribunals. This book first examines the interaction between the ‘minimum standard of treatment’ (MST) and the FET standard and the question why States started referring to the former in their BITs. It also addresses the question whether the FET should be considered as an autonomous standard of protection under BITs. This book also examines the controversial proposition that the FET standard should now be considered as a rule of customary international law. I will show that while the practice of States to include FET clauses in their BITs can be considered as general, widespread and representative, it remains that it is not uniform and consistent enough for the standard to have crystallised into a customary rule. States also lack the necessary opinio juris when including the clause in their BITs.

In Principles of Evidence in Public International Law as Applied by Investor-State Tribunals, Kabir Duggal and Wendy Cai explore the fundamental principles of evidence and how these principles relate to burden of proof and standard of proof. By tracing the applications of major principles recognized by the International Court of Justice and applied by investor-state tribunal jurisprudence, the authors offer valuable insight into the interpretation, understanding, and nuances of indispensable principles of evidence, an area that has been ignored in both investor-state arbitration and public international law more generally.

In Jurisdiction and Admissibility in Investment Arbitration, Filippo Fontanelli offers an analysis of the subject for practitioners and scholars. The author undertakes two converging studies: first, the practice of investment tribunals is surveyed to provide a representative overview of how jurisdiction and admissibility operate in arbitration proceedings. Second, these concepts are studied in the wider framework of public international law litigation, in the attempt to solve the definitional issues, or at least trace them back to their theoretical background.The analysis shows that the confusion prevailing in investment arbitration is largely a legacy of the comparable confusion that affects the notions of jurisdiction and admissibility in all kinds of dispute settlement under international law. Whilst the confusion is often irrelevant in the practice, some instances arise where it affects the outcome of the proceedings. The essay discusses some of these instances and recommends adopting a novel approach, which hinges on judicial discretion as the critical element of admissibility.

Damages in Investor-State Arbitration: Current Issues and Challenges addresses specificities of the assessment of damages in investor-state disputes, reflecting the tensions between the sovereignty and self-determination of states and their legal obligations towards foreign investors. These tensions are primarily present in the context of compensation for expropriation, but other commitments of host states undertaken in bilateral investment treaties and contracts with foreign investors may also be in conflict with changing political and economic circumstances. With this background, the calculation of damages becomes a complex endeavor in each case. The lack of valuation principles that are uniformly accepted and implemented leads to uncertainty and unpredictability in practice. The present analysis tries to identify the most important issues and challenges, such as the choice of the valuation date, appropriate valuation methods, moral damages, and the awarding of interest.

In Addressing Corruption Allegations in International Arbitration, Brody K. Greenwald and Jennifer A. Ivers provide a comprehensive overview of the key issues that arise in international arbitrations involving allegations of corruption by drawing upon their significant experience in these high-stakes cases, including in the only two reported investment treaty cases dismissed specifically as a result of corruption. Their monograph is a valuable resource that analyzes, among other things, the public policy against corruption, the requirements for establishing corruption, issues relating to the burden and standard of proof, how corruption has been proved in practice, and the legal consequences where corruption is established. Mr. Greenwald and Ms. Ivers also assess issues that arise where a sovereign State raises an arbitration defense based on alleged corruption, but does not prosecute the alleged wrongdoers in its domestic courts.

In Investor State Arbitration In A Changing World Order, the authors examine the sustained worldwide challenges to investor state arbitration arising from across the political spectrum. These challenges have led to extensive and thoughtful proposals for reform from the international arbitration community, domestic lawmakers, and international bureaucrats. These reforms play an important role in the continuous evolution of investor state arbitration, and will enhance the quality of justice rendered. However, the authors argue, these reforms are insufficient to resolve the domestic political challenges that investor state arbitration faces. Only political solutions that justify for broad populations the international flow of capital and the independent resolution of disputes arising therefrom can preserve the institution of investor state arbitration. Absent the more equitable distribution of the benefits associated with the international flow of capital, political support for investor state arbitration will remain tenuous, notwithstanding the significant de-escalatory benefits investor state arbitration offers.

The Selection and Removal of Arbitrators in Investor-State Dispute Settlement examines two essential features in investor-state dispute resolution: how arbitrators are selected and removed. Both topics have received increasing scrutiny and criticism, that have in turn generated calls for reforms. In its first part, Professor Chiara Giorgetti, an expert in international arbitration, explains the selection of arbitrators procedurally and comparatively under the most-often used arbitration rules. She then reviews critically arbitrators’ necessary and desirable qualities, and addresses some important and related policy issues, such as diversity and repeat appointments. In her work, she also includes an assessment of the calls to review how arbitrators are appointed, and specifically the proposal by the European Commission to create a permanent tribunal to resolve international investment disputes, the UNCITRAL Working Groups III Reform Process and the rules amendment proposal undertaken by the Secretariat of the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. In its second part, this monograph examines how arbitrators can be removed and reviews first the applicable provisions, under a variety of arbitration rules, to remove arbitrators who fail to possess the necessary qualities. It then also reviews the relevant case-law on challenges. The monograph assesses appointments and removals in a multifaceted and comprehensive way, and includes a critical assessment of the reasons and calls for reform of the ISDS system.

In Investors, States, and Arbitrators in the Crosshairs of International Investment Law and Environmental Protection, Dr Crina Baltag and Ylli Dautaj look at the investor-State dispute settlement system and inquire whether this is the most suitable transnational venue for resolving investment disputes that have an environmental component. This culminates essentially in whether arbitration is a legitimate forum and whether privately appointed arbitrators appropriately can resolve environmental-related disputes. These disputes are bound to increase in frequency because host-States are also partaking in global efforts to respond to environmental challenges.

In Threading the Sovereign’s Needle: A Philosophical Deconstruction of an Investor-State Tribunal’s Authority to Award Interim Relief in Relation to Criminal Proceedings, Alexander G. Leventhal draws from a rich compendium of investor-State case law deciding on requests for provisional measures in relation to criminal measures. Leventhal shows that, rather than a diffuse set of contradictory decisions, these cases obey a coherent philosophy. He lays out in detail the criteria that these tribunals have considered – the basis of the tribunal’s jurisdiction, the rights whose protection compels interim relief, tribunals’ considerations of the criteria for interim relief, and the binding nature and enforceability of an order for interim relief. More than that, however, he explains the reasons behind the results, making this work a must-read for practitioners and academics alike.

Multilateral investment treaties (MITs) are international legal instruments whose purpose is to facilitate social and economic cooperation on a global scale. While there is abundant literature and precedent on MITs generally, authors Kabir Duggal and Mohamed Wahab provide some of the first analysis focusing on the execution of MITs in the Arab and Muslim-majority worlds in this volume of Brill Research Perspectives in Investment Arbitration.This book focuses on two MITs: the Unified Agreement for the Investment of Arab Capital in the Arab States (UAA) and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Agreement for Promotion, Protection and Guarantee of Investments Among Member States (OIC). The UAA and OIC are among the oldest MITs in the world, enacted in 1980 and 1988, respectively. But only recently have these two long-dormant treaties acquired special significance. This book provides a comprehensive, critical review of these two treaties.