International Economic Law and Policy Blog

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Investor-State Arbitration

93 posts

A Watershed Moment for ISDS Reform

Last week marked a watershed moment for the movement to reform investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Meeting in Vienna, Delegations to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Working Group III (WGIII) agreed to work multilaterally to reform the resolution of investment disputes. Delegations agreed to focus on responding

Brady-Lighthizer ISDS Exchange

Congressman Kevin Brady and U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer had a good exchange today on ISDS at a House Ways and Means hearing. Here is a messy transcript (hopefully it is mostly accurate): Brady: You know I'm confident you and your team are going to negotiate a

Federal Court of Canada hearing Canada's application to set aside Bilcon NAFTA award

For those that may have missed it, the NAFTA Bilcon v Canada dispute was back in the news this week. In 2015, the Claytons and Bilcon of Delaware, a US company, were awarded compensation for breaches of NAFTA Articles 1105 (fair and equitable treatment) and 1102 (national treatment). The dispute

A NAFTA proposal: fix the FET investment protection commitment*

With the NAFTA negotiations, investment lawyers, lawmakers, business groups, and civil society are waiting to see how Canada, Mexico, and the US will address the heated topic of investor-State arbitration, where an investor can claim compensation directly against a host state based on a treaty breach before an ad hoc

Financial University Organizes Conference on Russia and the WTO

On 19-20 May 2015, the Financial University of the Russian Federation held its first international conference on the topic of "WTO Law in the Legal System of the Russian Federation: Problems of Application and Teaching." To my knowledge, this was the first international legal conference held to address

President Obama on ISDS

It's kind of incredible to see a U.S. President talking about an issue as technical as ISDS. Check it out at 10:48 and 19:10 of this video. Putting aside the argument about whether ISDS is good or bad, I think he is making a mistake

Investor-State in Australia

The Australian business community fights back: Sixteen peak business groups and leading companies have sent a letter of protest to Julia Gillard over the government's refusal to include provisions in a series of pending trade agreements that would protect the property and legal rights of Australian companies in

Alan Argues ...

A couple days ago, Alan pointed out that treaty interpretation is more than just titles of provisions. And he's right, of course. In addition to the context (which is how I think of these titles), he refers to the text, the negotiating history, the intention of the parties,

Simon Says ....

It is apparent that Simon, “our fearless leader” is keen to rely on titles to assist in the interpretation of articles and text in treaties. While titles may be of some assistance in certain circumstances the particular use of textual analysis doesn’t seem nearly as determinative as Simon seems

Van Harten on Investor-State Reform

In a paper posted on SSRN, law prof Gus Van Harten proposes some investor-state reforms: In border and trade talks with the US and the European Union, Canada should seek to improve the institutional framework of investor-state arbitration. As it happens, one of the best models appears to be a