International Economic Dispute Resolution

However, with economic globalisation and the ever-increasing interaction between national economies, these disputes have proliferated both in number and complexity, and so have the institutions and procedures to resolve them. Rules-based, rather than power-based, systems for resolving international economic disputes form a core aspect of global economic governance and are essential to sustainable economic growth and development worldwide. With the current rise of nationalism and unilateralism in many countries, rules-based international dispute resolution is in crisis.

This course aims at introducing students to the key features and principal challenges of international economic dispute resolution. The course starts with an introduction to methods and institutions/systems of international economic dispute resolution. The methods discussed include diplomatic methods, such as negotiation, mediation, inquiry and conciliation, as well as legal methods, such as arbitration and judicial settlement. The emphasis of this course is on the latter methods of dispute resolution. The course focuses on economic dispute resolution by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the dispute settlement system of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and under bilateral or regional free trade agreements, and the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

Rather than examining, one by one, these different institutions/systems for economic dispute resolution, this course focuses on specific features of, and challenges encountered by, these institutions and systems in resolving international trade and investment disputes.