In recent times, the importance of foreign investments becomes vital in the world’s economy. The mutual cooperation between developed and developing countries by signing the bilateral and ...multilateral treaties with its own dispute settlement mechanisms is growing significantly. Due to the fact mentioned above, the frame- work gives the possibilities for both - investors and host states to protect their rights in the international forum. The present research is related to the importance of the notion of “Investment” in International Investment Arbitration, its implications, and the current trends on the definition itself. This issue is very important, as it is a threshold jurisdictional question for the International Investment Tribunal’s jurisdiction. The paper discusses the Bilateral Investment Treaties, their legal nature, and the expediency of their conclusion. The issue of Notion of direct investment in bilateral investment treaties will also be detailed in the paper, moreover, there will be an overview of different types of BIT definitions on the example of different countries’ BIT practice. A very comprehensive discussion will be followed on the best practices established by the International Investment Tribunals regarding the definition of “investment”. In the end, the author will analyze whether or not there is a common/universal notion of investment in Investor-State disputes.
One of the most urgent and widely discussed problems of international organisations is their need for democratic legitimacy. In this article, a novel approach is developed for the study of democracy ...in international context. This approach is borrowed from sociological theory and focuses on Shmuel Eisenstadt's and Niklas Luhmann's views on social differentiation and illustrated through the current debate over the democratic deficits of international arbitration. The proposed differentiation theory provides a dynamic and abstract explanatory framework which apart from offering a conceptual frame of reference for the judicialisation of international relations, makes the concept of democracy more specific and precise. Moreover, in contrast to other theories, it explains the claims for democracy arising out of both differentiation and dedifferentiation processes. Ultimately, this article argues that the claim for democracy is inadequate when applied to international arbitration and obscures its need for other forms of legitimisation.
This article argues that, in the context of international investment law, the principle of autonomy need not be construed as broadly as the recent judgment in Achmea suggested. The Court's approach ...in this case is formalist, inward looking and hostile to the harmonious co-existence between eu and international law. The article argues, however, that this conception of autonomy should be confined to the specific legal and policy context of investment agreements between Member States of the Union. A careful reading of Achmea supports this view. There are also sound conceptual, legal, and policy reasons that militate for a more open approach to autonomy when it comes to the Union's trade agreements with third countries.
Arbitration, as a method of pacific settlement of disputes, is mentioned in Article 33 of the Charter of the United Nations, by which parties to any dispute endeavor to find a solution to eliminate ...their conflict. Yet, article 33 does not include other forms of arbitrations that the United Nations System deals with. International arbitrations are generally referred to as interstate arbitration, international commercial arbitration, and international investment arbitration. Although these arbitration-based methods of international dispute settlement are different, they all observe the same goal: the settlement of disputes by peaceful means and preventing the parties from resorting to adverse behavior. Due to their common goal, it calls the role of the United Nations in promulgating international arbitrations among its member States into question: Has the UN had any bold involvement in promoting and strengthening international arbitrations in the abovementioned fields? It seems that the influence of the UN on interstate arbitration is undeniable because of its main goal and principles; however, this article depicts that the UN policy regarding international arbitrations adheres to the forming and developing international commercial arbitration and international investment arbitration rather than inter-state arbitration. The UN also plays a mediocre role in developing thematic-oriented international arbitrations.
Opinion 1/17 generated substantial scientific debate about the impact of Investor State Dispute Settlement mechanisms on the dynamic notion of the "autonomy" of the EU legal order. While analysing ...Opinion 1/17, it is important to evaluate the arguments that convinced the Court in reaching the conclusion that the creation of an Investment Court System provided in CETA to handle investment disputes is compatible with EU law. Focus on the merits of these arguments is amplified by the constant efforts of the CJEU to safeguard its strategic position as the sole guardian of the EU Treaties and of the EU legal order as a whole. The present analysis primarily explores the critical points in the Court's arguments that are related to the notion of autonomy. The primary argument put forth is that the rationale behind Opinion 1/17 leaves an existent, however narrow, risk for the adequate preservation of the autonomy of EU legal order that needs to be addressed. This enhances the need for the CJEU to find in the future ways for an inclusion of the arbitral dispute settlement structures. Inevitably so, the present analysis highlights the fundamental necessity to preserve the autonomy of EU legal order while exploring the pathway to reconcile two necessities: the need for an autonomous 'self-dependence' of the Union's legal system and the need of conciliation in the field of international investment arbitration. The strategic importance of safeguarding the autonomy of EU Law, a conditio sine qua non for the overall EU integration process, should better rely on practical, technical ways for its observance than to policy influenced fluctuations of its normative substance.
ESAANZ ESSAY PRIZE WINNERInternational investment arbitration is in a controversial state. While the systems put into place by various treaties allow an investor to protect their investments directly ...by initiating proceedings against a government, claims of arbitrator bias are supported by the fact that arbitrators are appointed by the parties. There are transparency concerns which contribute to arbitrators being biased towards investors from developed countries. The regime of international investment arbitration is heading towards either abolition or reform. The European Union, being the partner to more investment treaties than any other country, proposes the creation of a multilateral investment court. As a structured arbitration court, there may be less bias than the current regime of investment arbitration as proceedings would be more transparent and open to the public, binding precedent would leave less grey area in decisions and add consistency to rulings, and judges no longer being appointed by the parties removes any incentive to rule in favour of their appointing party to secure future appointments. Together with an appeals system, this proposed structure purports to be a positive change in ISDS. However as the essay will show, this approach is not likely to be attractive to the majority of states who are interested in protecting their right to govern. These issues will need to be addressed if the investment court proposal is going to gain support.
The international investment arbitration system between investors and host countries originated from the international commercial arbitration system. International investment disputes are usually ...disputes caused by the host country’s policies to protect public interests and the dissatisfaction of private investors caused by regulations. There are few methods for intelligently recommending judgment documents based on factual texts in international investment arbitration cases. Because of this, this paper proposes a recommendation algorithm for international investment arbitration adjudication documents based on multimodal feature fusion. This paper teaches the structural information of paragraph tags and the relationship between paragraph contexts and incomplete judgment documents. The algorithm achieves a good structuring effect of international investment arbitration documents.
PDF
