The WTO and International Investment Law: Converging Systems

by Jürgen Kurtz

Overview

International law has historically regulated foreign trade and foreign investment differently. Distinct evolutionary pathways have led to variances in treaty form, institutional culture, and dispute settlement. With their inevitable erosion through the late twentieth to early twenty-first centuries, those weak boundaries have become porous and indefensible. Powerful economic, legal and sociological factors are now pushing the two systems together. In this book, Jürgen Kurtz systematically explores the often complex and little-understood dynamics of this convergence phenomenon. Kurtz addresses the growing connections between international trade and investment law, proposing a theoretically grounded and doctrinally tractable framework to understand the deepening relationship between them. The book also offers reform ideas and possibilities, providing treaty negotiators and other government officials with a set of theoretical insights and doctrinal models that can guide actors in building a justifiable and sustainable level of commonality between the two legal systems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781316443804
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/25/2016
Series:	Cambridge International Trade and Economic Law , #20
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Jürgen Kurtz is a Professor and Director of International Economic Law Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He also teaches as Visiting Professor of Law in the LLM in a European and Global Context at Universidade Catolica in Portugal, the LLM in International Economic Law and Policy at the University of Barcelona, and also teaches at the Singapore International Arbitration Academy and the Pearl River Academy of International Trade and Investment Law in Macau and Shenzhen, China. He is currently a director of the Society of International Economic Law and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of World Investment and Trade.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. History; 3. National treatment; 4. Science as a common proxy for rational regulation; 5. Common exceptions and derogations; 6. Dispute settlement; 7. Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

"Professor Kurtz's book is a stimulating and evocative treatment of a field of contemporary and growing importance. His thorough scholarship impresses and his analysis and insight both inform and challenge. This is a very important work."
Donald McRae, Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies

"The WTO and International Investment Law by Professor Jürgen Kurtz is without a doubt the most comprehensive and thorough study to date of the evolving relationship between international trade law and international investment law. It is magisterial in its scope, covering a broad range of international disputes (within the World Trade Organization) and relevant investor-state arbitrations. It engages with both trade law, and investment protection law, each on its own terms, with a fluency of discourse that will surely be appreciated by scholars and practitioners in both fields … [It] will be the standard against which all academic forays into this area of regime interaction will be measured."
Tomer Broude, Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies

'Without doubt, this book is a comprehensive and stimulating study by an expert in both fields that will deepen understanding of the relationship between trade and investment. The author masterfully brings together discourses that are taking place between scholars and practitioners in each regime but frequently in relative isolation from each other.' Rhea T. Hoffmann, European Journal of International Law

'… remarkable for the richness of its approach, covering both black letter law and doctrine as well as the conceptual and historical context of the converging, overlapping and still diverging systems - which makes for a book valuable even to those outside the immediate fields treated.' Joseph Weiler, European Journal of International Law

'This is a challenging and inspiring book, with powerful arguments that will set the benchmark for future discussions on the relationship between WTO law and international investment law, their cross-fertilization and convergence, cross-inspiration and the borrowing of institutions, rules, interpretive methods and arguments.' Catherine Titi, Common Market Law Review

'The WTO and International Investment Law offers the reader an intriguing picture of the current state of international investment law … highly recommended reading for everyone interested in the current as well as the future development of international investment law.' Ondřej Svoboda, Czech Yearbook of Public & Private International Law

From the Publisher