Gary Born’s article ‘The 1933 Directives on Arbitration of the German Reich: Echoes Past?’ fascinates for good and not so reasons in almost equal measure. The author skillfully illuminated a rarely-discussed episode arbitral legal history aimed to apply its lessons current debates surrounding investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) reform. overarching argument is that criticism and/or reform a...

This paper shows that investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) make multinational firms more aggressive by increasing cost-reducing investments with the aim to enlarge potential compensation an ISDS provision may offer. While a larger investment reduces market distortion, it will also compensations larger. Consequently, foreign investor do not imply zero-sum game. decrease domestic welfare, in...

This article seeks to explain recent decisions by countries terminate their existing bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and revisit commitment future international agreements (IIAs). It argues that BITs, transnational corporations (TNCs), host States arbitration institutions form a decentralized system of global governance foreign direct (FDI), based on insights from the fields political econ...

In this commentary, we endorse concerns about the health impact of the trans-pacific partnership (TPP), paying particular attention to its mechanisms for investor state dispute settlement. We then describe the different, judgeled approach being advocated by the European Commission team negotiating the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, arguing that, while not perfect, it offers si...

The investment treaty regime, unlike other economic regimes, lacks common substantive multilateral rules and depends on countries signing bilateral or plurilateral treaties. As the regime presented a pro-developed country bias, developing countries, especially in Latin America, avoided treaties up to 1980s. Brazil followed this trend did not start an program until late 1990s. However, never ent...

This paper discusses the EU Commission’s proposal to establish a ground-breaking, two-tier Investment Court System in Section 3 of Commission’ draft TTIP address concerns about systemic deficiencies looming behind current ISDS (mainly lack legitimacy, consistency and transparency) by bringing private model investment dispute settlement back public domain, as well providing for an appellate mech...