Investor-State Arbitration

Luke Peterson reports on three different approaches to invesment protection treaties: While Canadian officials are still hopeful that a Canada-EU trade deal can be finalized by next year, some EU member-states would like nothing better than to shunt talks onto a slow-track. A particular sore point emerging in the Canada-EU

On SSRN, here's the abstract of a paper entitled "When the Claim Hits: Bilateral Investment Treaties and Bounded Rational Learning," by Lauge Skovgaard Poulsen and Emma Aisbett: Using the international investment regime as its point of departure, the paper introduces notions of bounded rationality to the

In an ASIL Insight entitled "The Australian Trade Policy Statement on Investor-State Dispute Settlement," Jürgen Kurtz writes: States can protect domestic policy space in an investment treaty by clearly delineating the outer limits of substantive obligations and/or crafting exceptions for state conduct. For instance, the investment chapter

From a paper by Anne Van Aaken and Tobias A. Lehmann, entitled "Investment and Sustainable Development: Developing a New Conceptual Framework": It is already questionable whether the only purpose of [International Investment Agreements] IIAs is the protection of investment.  Rather, as most preambles reveal, protection of investment is

How is New Zealand reacting to the Philip Morris investment claim against Australia's plain packaging law?  This is from the New Zealand Herald: Big tobacco companies won't be able to sue the Government over anti-smoking laws, Prime Minister John Key says. Philip Morris Asia, based in

Via a John Boscariol tweet, I see that there is a new tobacco regulation investment treaty claim in the works: INTERNATIONAL tobacco giant Philip Morris will launch legal action today aimed at forcing the Gillard government to back down on its plain-packaging legislation or face a compensation bill of "

Can investment treaties be used to force governments to follow through on their climate change plans?  From a new paper: In addition to the general non-commercial risks that may affect any foreign direct investment, low-carbon investments face specific risks related to the mechanisms of public support that states develop to

A few posts ago, I asked: Of all the individuals, groups and other entities that are out there in the world, why do only "foreign investors" have access to this special international remedy? In the comments to my post, Mark Kantor said: Your question "why do only

In this paper, Luke Nottage is concerned that Australia's recent policy change with respect to investor-state might lead to a decline in investor-state provisions all around Asia.  Here's the abstract: Treaty-based investor-state arbitration (ISA) has gradually become a more established part of the legal landscape in

In a short paper, Kevin Gallagher and Elen Shrestha discuss the issue of whether investment treaty arbitration is biased against developing countries.  They first note the argument of those who say there is no bias: Defenders claim that the system does not unfairly subject developing countries to arbitral panels.  When