Investor-State Arbitration

From the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment: Investment Treaties and a New Legal Imagination May 26, 202111:00 AM - 12:00 PMONLINE Please register here. Foreign investors have a privileged position under investment treaties, enjoying strong rights, no obligations, and the ability to rely on a highly efficient enforcement

Last weeks’ 40th Session marked a first real shift from the forest to the trees. The Working Group turned to far more specific reports by the Secretariat focused on designing an appellate mechanism (per a longstanding compromise dividing time equally between designing permanent institutions and othe

A couple days ago, I posted about Biden's responses to trade questions from the United Steelworkers. Here's what he said about ISDS: I don't believe that corporations should get special tribunals that are not available to other organizations. I oppose the ability of private

This is a guest post from law professor Ben Heath: There is growing concern in some quarters that international investment law and arbitration will limit national governments’ ability to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic fallout.  Last week saw the rollout of two related but distinct non-governmental initiatives

Last week, multilateral efforts to reform investor-state dispute resolution (ISDS) entered a new phase, with substantive discussions of reform options beginning in earnest. As readers of this blog are aware, delegations from around a hundred States have been working multilaterally toward reforming ISDS in the United Nations Commission on International

First published on EJIL: Talk! by  Anthea Roberts and Taylor St. John* A striking feature of the debates over ISDS reform in the last UNCITRAL session were the battles over naming and framing. In some ways, these battles reflect the power that names and frames have in shaping our understanding

First published on EJIL: Talk! by Anthea Roberts and Taylor St. John* The UNCITRAL debates over ISDS reforms can serve as a real-world laboratory for observing changes in the national interests and policies of different countries, as well as shifts in their geopolitical weight and alignments. As part of a

First published on EJIL: Talk! by Malcolm Langford and Anthea Roberts* UNCITRAL’s Working Group III on investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) reform continues to attract substantial and growing interest. In the first week of April 2019, a record number of states and observers descended on New York to clarify the

In an opinion released today, the European Court of Justice concluded that: "The mechanism for the resolution of disputes between investors and States provided for by the free trade agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA) is compatible with EU law." This is from paras. 151-161 of the