7 Jan 2015
New WTI book on investor-State arbitration
Edited by Shaheeza Lalani and Rodrigo Polanco, The Role of the State in Investor-State Arbitration is a collection of contributions from lawyers, arbitrators, economists and political scientists on the development of the concept of the “State” in a field that currently presents an increasing number of controversial disputes: investor-State arbitration.
Published by Brill, the volume results from the World Trade Institute’s first-ever Doctoral Programme Conference, held on 8 November 2013 with funding from the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and devoted to the same topic.
It contains 15 edited papers from that conference, a foreword by Dr Shaheeza Lalani, the director of WTI’s Doctoral Programme, and a conclusion by doctoral candidate Rodrigo Polanco, who co-organised the conference with Lalani and Stephen Gelb, director of the WTI’s International Investment Initiative (I3).
As international investment has grown in importance, a new field of international law has developed that defines the obligations of host states towards foreign investors and creates procedures for dispute resolution. In recent decades there has been spectacular growth in arbitration to resolve investor-State disputes. Foreign investors are able to use international arbitration to settle disputes with the host country rather than having to go through the host country’s domestic courts.
The book analyses the limits of the host State as a regulator, studying issues such as attribution and the role of State-owned enterprises and sub-State entities; the changing role of the home State in investor-State disputes, including its direct participation in investor-State arbitration and State to State dispute settlement; and the overall role that both home and host States can play in the improvement of investor-State dispute settlement.
The volume is now available in print and will appear in e-book edition shortly. Details of the e-book edition will soon be found here.