The legitimacy crisis confronting the international investment regime has called for reforms to eliminate the asymmetric and troubled nature of investment treaties. These instruments grant extensive investor protections without offering reciprocal safeguards for host States wishing to preserve regulatory space. This article argues that any reform designed to redress imbalances in the existing regime should first aim at narrowing the personal jurisdiction of investment tribunals. Problematically, access to most investment treaties depends on broad nationality requirements, which have enabled investors to use corporations or passports of convenience to obtain treaty protection. This practice exacerbates the unbalanced relationship between host States and investors. It increases host States’ exposure to investment treaty claims and allows investors to circumvent newer, more State-oriented investment treaties. Using as an example the novel anti-nationality planning approach embraced in the 2019 Dutch Model BIT, this article suggests effective treaty mechanisms that States can adopt to restrict the range of investors that are entitled to claim.

This article addresses some of the changes in international law and foreign relations law which have impinged on the operation of the State Immunity Act 1978 in the first 40 years of its operation and some of the ways in which it has been supplemented by judicial decisions. It addresses, in particular, the initial need for legislation in this field, the circumstances in which agents of a State may be entitled to immunity, the relationship between State immunity in domestic law and Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the relationship of State immunity and rules of jus cogens, and the respective scope of State immunity and principles of non-justiciability.

This article examines the notion of judicial takings in international law and its reflection in the practice of investment tribunals. It takes stock of the already significant body of arbitral jurisprudence dealing with expropriation claims grounded in, or relating to, the acts or omissions of courts, with a view to developing a coherent theory of judicial expropriations. It is suggested that, due to the courts’ specific role in the determination of the underlying proprietary rights that are the very object of international legal protection, judicial measures warrant different conceptual treatment from measures by other State organs. Traditional approaches to expropriation analysis do not take this sufficiently into account and therefore do not provide adequate tools for distinguishing legitimate judicial measures from undue interferences with investors’ rights. It is argued that a sui generis approach is hence needed: where proprietary rights are primarily affected by the impugned judicial action, it is first necessary to determine whether such action is itself wrongful under international law, for only then can it be treated as an act of expropriation. However, the proper analytical approach will ultimately depend on the circumstances of each case and traditional approaches, such as the sole effects doctrine, may still be appropriate where the judicial injury actually flows from wrongful legislative or executive conduct.

The International Law Commission's 2019 Draft Conclusions on Peremptory Norms of International Law assert that States have an obligation to cooperate to end serious breaches of peremptory norms. International law provides scarce guidance, however, regarding how States are expected to fulfil that obligation. This article seeks to elaborate: first, whether the prohibition of crimes against humanity and the ‘basic rules’ of international humanitarian law are peremptory norms; second, what States are required to do to fulfil their obligation to cooperate; and third, how States might utilise the General Assembly as a forum through which to fulfil that obligation.