Expropriation In Investment Treaty Arbitration

In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of investors seeking compensation from states perceived to have expropriated their projects. Part of the Oxford International Arbitration Series, this book provides a comprehensive guide to expropriation and how it is applied in practice. The book begins by introducing the law of expropriation from a historical standpoint, charting some of the key decisions in the history of expropriation and how it has evolved to become an accepted principle in international law today. It then proceeds to offer a detailed examination of existing case law, from which common substantive principles of the international law on expropriation are drawn out. Relevant international cases from the ICJ, ECHR, Iran-US Tribunal, ICSID, NAFTA, and the ECT are considered to complement the focus on investment treaty arbitration. The book also examines the interplay between expropriation and other standards of treaty protection, namely fair and equitable treatment. The final chapters comment on current trends and assess the relevance of expropriation in the present day.

Many investment arbitration cases involve a challenge to a regulatory measure of a host state on the basis of indirect expropriation. The practice of arbitral tribunals is diverse and unsettled. In recent years States have been trying to clarify the relationship between regulatory freedom (also known as 'police powers') and indirect expropriation by revising provisions on indirect expropriation in their investment treaties. This book provides the first focused analysis of indirect expropriation and regulatory freedom, drawing on a broad range of the jurisprudence of investment tribunals. The nature of regulatory freedom in international law has been explained on the bases of jurisprudence of international courts and tribunals such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), dispute resolution bodies of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), European Court of Human Rights. While showing how cases involving standoff between regulatory freedom and indirect expropriation can be resolved in practice, the book goes on to present a conceptual framework for interpreting the nuances of this relationship. The book provides a detailed responses to the following complex questions: • To what extent do states retain regulatory freedom after entering into investment treaties? • What is the scope of regulatory freedom in general public international law? • What are the elements of regulatory freedom and standard of review? • How to draw a dividing line between regulatory freedom and indirect expropriation? • Whether the sole effects doctrine or the police powers is the appropriate method for distinguishing between regulatory freedom and indirect expropriation? While addressing these questions, the author analyses different theoretical approaches that reflect upon the relationship between regulatory freedom and indirect expropriation and how far they assist in understanding these potentially overlapping concepts; their relationship with each other; and the method for distinguishing between them. Given the dense network of around three thousand bilateral investment treaties (BITs) that impose an obligation to protect foreign investments in a State, this book will help practitioners identify, through analysis of cases from diverse fields, how a situation may be categorized either as regulatory freedom or as indirect expropriation. The analysis will also be of value to government officials and lawyers involved in negotiating and re-negotiating investment treaties, and to arbitrators who have to decide these issues. Scholars will welcome the book's keen insight into the contentious relationship between a customary international law norm and a treaty norm.

When does a state measure become subject to compensation as an indirect expropriation under international law? The author examines claims of indirect takings from such fora as the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, the European Court of Human Rights, and arbitral panels in investment treaty arbitrations.

Today thousands of investors act globally in markets providing services, technology or capital in countries all around the world. This activity can be peacefully accomplished when both the investor and the host State know that the disputes will be resolved under the aegis of the investor-State arbitration regime, wherein an investor is provided with a direct right of action against a State, most commonly stemming from a bilateral or multilateral investment treaty. This book approaches the substantive and sometimes difficult concepts of investor-State arbitration in a clear and concise explanatory fashion. In the course of acquainting the reader with the basic legal concepts and policies of the regime, the authors address such issues as the following: • consent to jurisdiction; • State responsibility; • possible conflict of interests; • mechanisms for reviewing an award; • damages and costs; and • enforcement. The book examines a number of arbitration procedures arising from various perspectives with differing underlying assumptions while highlighting important cases. Given that investor-State arbitration is now under the public watch and facing many challenges, this remarkably clear and concise overview of the regime will prove to be of great value to in-house counsel and other practitioners, as well as to government policymakers and students.x`

Investment treaties are some of the most controversial but least understood instruments of global economic governance. Public interest in international investment arbitration is growing and some developed and developing countries are beginning to revisit their investment treaty policies. The Political Economy of the Investment Treaty Regime synthesises and advances the growing literature on this subject by integrating legal, economic, and political perspectives. Based on an analysis of the substantive and procedural rights conferred by investment treaties, it asks four basic questions. What are the costs and benefits of investment treaties for investors, states, and other stakeholders? Why did developed and developing countries sign the treaties? Why should private arbitrators be allowed to review public regulations passed by states? And what is the relationship between the investment treaty regime and the broader regime complex that governs international investment? Through a concise, but comprehensive, analysis, this book fills in some of the many "blind spots" of academics from different disciplines, and is the first port of call for lawyers, investors, policy-makers, and stakeholders trying to make sense of these critical instruments governing investor-state relations.

Hydrological variability, increasing competition for water, and the need for regulatory flexibility may increasingly compel governments to adopt measures with significant economic impact on foreign investment. In International Investment Law and Water Resources Management, Daza-Clark offers an appraisal of indirect expropriation, revisiting the well-known doctrine of the police power. Through the lens of international investment law, the author explores a framework that assesses the legitimate exercise of police power with particular attention to the special nature of water resources.

Today there are more than 2,500 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) around the world. Most of these investment protection treaties offer foreign investors a direct cause of action to claim damages against host-states before international arbitral tribunals. This procedure, together with the requirement of compensation in indirect expropriations and the fair and equitable treatment standard, have transformed the way we think about state liability in international law. We live in the BIT generation, a world where BITs define the scope and conditions according to which states are economically accountable for the consequences of regulatory change and administrative action. Investment arbitration in the BIT generation carries new functions which pose unprecedented normative challenges, such as the arbitral bodies established to resolve investor/state disputes defining the relationship between property rights and the public interest. They also review state action for arbitrariness, and define the proper tests under which that review should proceed. State Liability in Investment Treaty Arbitration is an interdisciplinary work, aimed at academics and practitioners, which focuses on five key dimensions of BIT arbitration. First, it analyses the past practice of state responsibility for injuries to aliens, placing the BIT generation in historical perspective. Second, it develops a descriptive law-and-economics model that explains the proliferation of BITs, and why they are all worded so similarly. Third, it addresses the legitimacy deficits of this new form of dispute settlement, weighing its potential advantages and democratic shortfalls. Fourth, it gives a comparative overview of the universal tension between property rights and the public interest, and the problems and challenges associated with liability grounded in illegal and arbitrary state action. Finally, it presents a detailed legal study of the current state of BIT jurisprudence regarding indirect expropriations and the fair and equitable treatment clause. This title is included in Bloomsbury Professional's International Arbitration online service.

This volume contains the papers and proceedings of the eighth annual Juris Conference addressing new developments in investment treaty arbitration with a focus on the fundamental issues that have drawn some of the greatest controversies in the jurisprudence over the past few years. The four topics addressed in this book include: Challenges to Arbitrators: Should the Challenge Process Be Overhauled?New Developments in Definition of "Investment": What Is the Role of the Concept of "Property" in Investment Arbitration?Is Investment Treaty Arbitration a Mechanism to Second-guess Governments' Exercise of Administrative Discretion: Public Law or Lex Investoria?Awarding Damages: Proportionality, Contributory Fault, and Arbitral Tribunals' Discretion or Toss of a Coin? Contributors: Meriam N. Alrashid Paul Barker Julie Bédard Alexander Bĕlohlávek Amal Bouchenaki Mark N. Bravin Kate Brown de Vejar Julián Cárdenas Garcia Tina Cicchetti Robert A. DeRise Paolo Di Rosa James Egerton-Vernon Timothy L. Foden George K. Foster John Y. Gotanda George Kahale III Jonathan S. Kallmer Joshua Karton Matthew S. Kronby Pablo D. López Zadicoff Juan Felipe Merizalde Urdaneta Craig Miles Caline Mouawad Timothy G. Nelson Michael Nolan Eloïse Obadia Sirshar Qureshi Charles E. Roh Charles B. Rosenberg Margarita R. Sánchez Matthew D. Slater Fernando A. Tupa Janet M. Whittaker

Investor-state arbitration is a relatively new dispute settlement mechanism that allows foreign investors the opportunity to seek redress for damages arising out of breaches of investment-related treaty obligations by the governments of host countries. Claims are submitted to independent, international arbitration tribunals, which are called upon to interpret the treaty at hand. Because of the public interest involved in these cases, the awards of these tribunals are subject to much scrutiny and debate. Thus, it has already generated hundreds of cases and created new legal disciplines, inspiring a continuous string of legal writings. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the main issues that arise in investor-state arbitration. It accompanies the reader through the phases of such a procedure, starting with an examination of the instruments, which provide, in the overwhelming majority of the cases, the legal basis for the requests for such arbitration. It then continues with the launching of the arbitration procedure, followed by the analysis of the main jurisdictional and substantive issues that the tribunals are confronted with, and the review procedures, when there is a request for setting aside of the award. It finally looks at the post-award phase and concludes with a reflection on the role of precedent in investment arbitration. Arbitration under International Investment Agreements: a Guide to the Key Issues contains in one volume what everybody needs to know on this evolving topic. Calling on the most renowned experts in this field, private practitioners, academics, government and international organization officials, it describes the process in all its phases from A to Z, providing a comprehensive insight in the way investor-state arbitration works from the perspective of the main actors involved. Its analyses of all key aspects of the topic are pragmatic and reliable.

"This book, the outgrowth of a conference organized by the editors at Harvard Law School on April 19, 2008, aims to uncover the drivers behind the backlash against the current international investment regime."--Library of Congress Online Calalog.