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The Shifting Landscape of International Investment Law and Its Commentary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Jürgen Kurtz
Jürgen Kurtz*
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne Law School
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Type
Recent Books on International Law
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 106 , Issue 3 , July 2012 , pp. 686 - 694
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 2012

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References

1 North American Free Trade Agreement, Can.-Mex.-U.S., Dec. 17, 1992, 107 Stat. 2006, 32 ILM 289 & 605 (1993) [hereinafter NAFTA].

2 For instance, Australia has recently announced that it will no longer include investor-state arbitration provisions in future bilateral and regional trade agreements. In a similar vein, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela have employed treaty renunciation and/or withdrawal from the ICSID Convention. For analysis of the former, see Kurtz, Jürgen, Australia’s Rejection of Investor-State Arbitration: Causation, Omission and Implication, 27 ICSID Rev. (forthcoming 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Up until 1998, only 14 BIT-related cases had been brought before a key arbitral forum in the field, the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Since the late 1990s, the growth in cases has been exponential with cumulative numbers rising to 357 by the end of 2009. See UNCTAD, Investor-State Dispute Settlement and Impact on Investment Rulemaking 7, UN Sales No. E.07.II.D.10 (2007); UNCTAD, Latest Developments in Investor-State Dispute Settlement 1-2, UN Doc. UNCTAD/WEB/ITE/IIA/2008/3 (2008), available at http://unctad.org/en/docs/iteiia20083_en.pdf; UNCTAD, Latest Developments in Investor-State Dispute Settlement 1, UN Doc. UNCTAD/WEB/DIAE/IA/2010/3 (2010), available at http://unctad.org/en/docs/webdiaeia 20103_en.pdf.

4 See, e.g., Campbell Mclachlan, Laurence Shore & Matthew Weiniger, International Investment Arbitration: Substantive Principles (2007).

5 Id. at 251-54 (devoting a total of three pages to national treatment protection, in comparison to extended analyses of the fair and equitable standard (Id. at 226-47) and of expropriation protections (id. at 265-313)); see also Sornarajah, M., The International Law on Foreign Investment 319-27 (2d ed. 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dolzer, Rudolf & Schreuer, Christoph, Principles of International Investment Law 179 (2008)Google Scholar.

6 E.g., Kenneth J. Vandevelde, U.S. Investent Treaties: Policy and Practice (1992).

7 E.g., Alvarez, José E., The Once and Future Foreign Investment Regime, in Looking to The Future: Essays in Honor of W. Michael Reisman 607 (Arsanjani, Mahnoush H., Cogan, Jacob Katz, Sloane, Robert D. & Wiessner, Siegfried eds., 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alvarez, José E., The Return of the State, 20 Minn. J. Int’l L. 223 (2011)Google Scholar.

8 See, e.g., Continental Casualty Co. v. Argentine Republic, ICSID Case No. ARB/03/9, Award, paras. 166-99 (Sept. 5,2008). For analysis of the use of WTO law in the Continental swata, see Kurtz, Jürgen, Adjudging the Exceptional at International Investment Law: Security, Public Order and Financial Crisis, 59 Int’l. Comp. L. Q. 325, 359-70 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See, e.g., Fraport AG Frankfurt Airport Services Worldwide v. Philippines, ICSID Case No. ARB/03/25, Annulment, paras. 73-118 (Dec. 17, 2010). In part, the decision criticized the arbitral tribunal’s reasoning in Fraport as, inter alia, “not well founded in the rules of interpretation binding upon the Tribunal.” Id., para. 107.

10 E.g., Vandevelde, supra note 6; Kenneth J. Vandevelde, U.S. International Investment Agreements (2009).

11 ‘ See infra note 27 and accompanying text.

12 Compare Pope & Talbot, Inc. v. Canada, Merits, Phase 2, para. 115 (NAFTA Ch. 11 Arb. Trib. Apr. 10, 2001) (ignoring the textual construction of the fair and equitable standard in NAFTA Article 1105 that the standard of treatment be “in accordance with international law” and instead “interpreting the language of Article 1105 consistently with the language in the BITs” with the result that fairness is a free-standing obligation, independent of the requirements of international law), with NAFTA Free Trade Commission, Notes of Interpretation of Certain Chapter 11 Provisions, para. 2(1)- (2) (July 31, 2001) (ruling that Article 1105 “prescribes the customary international law minimum standard of treatment” and that its underlying concepts “do not require treatment in addition to or beyond that which is required by the customary international law minimum standard of treatment of aliens”).

13 See, e.g., Schill, Stephan W., Tearing Down the Great Wall: The New Generation Investment Treaties of the People’s Republic of China, 15 Cardozo J. Int’l & Comp. L. 73, 78-97 (2007)Google Scholar.

14 See generally Alvarez, José E., Comparison U.S. Model BIT (1984) and U.S. Model BIT (2004), 7 Transnat’l Dlsp. Mgmt. 1 (2010)Google Scholar.

15 Loewen Group, Inc. v. United States, Award, ICSID Case No. ARB(AF)/98/3 (NAFTA Ch. 11 Arb. Trib. June 26, 2003).

16 See, e.g., McLachlan, Shore & Weiniger, supra note 4, at 229-33.

17 Jeswald W. Salacuse & Sullivan, Nicholas P., Do BITs Really Work? An Evaluation of Bilateral Investment Treaties and Their Grand Bargain, 46 Harv. Int’l L. J. 67 (2005)Google Scholar.

18 For the original account, see Raymond Vernon, Sovereignty at Bay: The Multinational Spread of U.S. Enterprises 46-59 (1971); see also Grosse, Robert, The Bargaining View of Government-Business Rektions, in International Business and Government Relations in the 21st Century 273 (Grosse, Robert ed., 2005)Google Scholar.

19 Kobrin, Stephen J., Testing the Bargaining Hypothesis in the Manufacturing Sector in Developing Countries, 41 Int’l Org. 609 (1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Metalclad Corp. v. Mexico, ICSID No. ARB(AF)/97/1 (NAFTA Ch. 11 Arb. Trib. Aug. 30, 2000), 40 ILM 36 (2001).

21 Mexico v. Metalclad Corp., 2001 BCSC 664, paras. 68-70 (B.C. Sup. Ct. May 2, 2001) (Tysoe, J.).

22 As a point of disclosure, this reviewer contributed a chapter to the book, but that chapter is not discussed here.

23 2004 U.S. Model BIT, Annex B(4), in McLachlan, Shore & Weiniger, supra note 4, at 415 (requiring an adjudicator to consider the “character of the government action” along with its “economic impact” and interference with “reasonable investment-backed expectations” in determining whether a regulatory measure could constitute indirect expropriation).

24 438 U.S. 104, 124 (1978) (“In engaging in these essentially ad hoc, factual inquiries, the Court’s decisions have identified several factors that have particular significance. The economic impact of the regulation on the claimant and, particularly, the extent to which the regulation has interfered with distinct reasonable investment-backed expectations are, of course, relevant considerations. So, too, is the character of the governmental action.”(Citation omitted)).

25 E.g., Agreement Establishing the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area, Annex on Expropriation and Compensation, Feb. 27, 2009, available at http://www.asean.fta.govt.nz/assets/Agreement-Establishing-the-ASEAN-Australia-New-Zealand- Free-Trade-Area.pdf [hereinafter ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Agreement].

26 Under Australian constitutional doctrine, more is required than simple deprival of economic value in grounding a claim for breach of section 51 (xxxi) of the Commonwealth Constitution. Recently, the High Court of Australia ruled that an identifiable and clear “acquisition” of property (normally by the state) is a necessary condition of violation. See ICM Agriculture Pty Ltd. v. Commonwealth, [2009] HCA 51, 81-86 (French, C.J., Gummow & Crennan, JJ.); id. at 142-54 (Hayne, Kiefel & Bell, JJ.).

27 E.g., Lévesque, Céline, Influences on the Canadian EIPA Model’ and ’the U.S. Model BIT: NAFTA Chapter 11 and Beyond, 44 Can. Y.B. Int’l L. 249, 271 (2006)Google Scholar (showing that Canada has included a GATT Article XX-type exception in every investment treaties it has signed since the adoption of the NAFTA).

28 “For the purposes of Chapter 8 (Trade in Services), Chapter 9 (Movement of Natural Persons) and Chapter 11 (investment), Article XIV of GATS including its footnotes shall be incorporated into and shall form part of this Agreement, mutatis mutandis.” ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Agreement, supra note 25, ch. 15, Art. 1(2).