The increasing importance of international investment has been accompanied by the rapid development of a new field of international law that defines the obligations of host states towards foreign investors and creates procedures for resolving disputes in connection with those obligations. Investor-State Arbitration examines the international treaties that give investors a right to arbitration of claims, the most-commonly employed arbitration rules, and the most important elements of investor-state arbitration procedure - including tribunal composition, jurisdiction, evidence, award, and challenge of annulment. Expert coverage includes procedural barriers to recovery, analysis of the substantive law of investment protection, and analysis of recent investor-state arbitral jurisprudence.
Investor-State Arbitration traces the evolution and rapid development of this important field of international arbitration, resulting from the formation of the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the more than 2,000 bilateral investment treaties, most of which have originated in the last twenty years. This development has led to far greater certainty for foreign investors in dealing with their host countries and has incentivized growth in international trade and commerce. Through arbitration, investors who have been negatively affected by the acts of a host country, such as, for example, the expropriation of property, now have a fair means of redress. Investor-State Arbitration analyzes the rights of private parties under these treaties to arbitrate disputes with countries, the arbitration rules most commonly employed in investor-state disputes, the important elements of substantive law and procedure, the enforcement of awards (including annulment proceedings under ICSID), current developments, including conflict and convergence of interests in capital-importing and capital-exporting countries, restrictions on state sovereignty, analysis of recent investor-state arbitral jurisprudence, and, finally, the emergence of an international investment jurisprudence.
Includes a full discussion of the future development of investor-state arbitration:
BL The challenges of globalization
BL The clash of capital-importing and capital-exporting countries
BL Environmental protection and free trade
BL Restrictions on state sovereignty
BL The construction of an international investment
BL The limits of arbitrability
BL The expansion of multilateral investment protections worldwide
