International Review of Law - 3 - Special Issue on International investment agreements, سبتمبر ٢٠١٧

The lack of participation and engagement by Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the World Trade Organization (WTO) in general, and in their use of the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (DSU) in particular, has been a continuing problem facing the WTO, tainting not only the organization as a whole but also the DSU, its crown jewel. This article considers—from a commercial viewpoint—the man Read More

Beyond trade facilitation, transparency norms in the WTO legal context are, implicitly and explicitly, aimed at addressing problems in the domestic administrative laws of its members. Through the lens of global governance, this article attempts to shed more light on the power of transparency norms enshrined in multilateral trading agreements under the aegis of the WTO. In this global ruled-based system, transparency has become suffici Read More

Financial crises often compel indebted countries to restructure their external public debt in order to ease their economic burden. Since this is usually quite disadvantageous to the creditors, they consequently sometimes begin “holdout” litigation so as to obtain the face value of their original bonds with interest. In this context, investor-state arbitration has been seen as an attractive alternative to litigation for creditors because the recognition Read More

This article explores the tendency of investment tribunals to resort to teleological interpretation and to the protection and promotion of foreign investments as a standard goal of investment treaties. It further explores how this tendency relates to the rule of interpretation envisaged in Articles 31–33 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties considering that the convention rule requires that text, context, and purpose are to be eq Read More

Through the lens of state-of-the-art text-as-data techniques, this article examines the bilateral investment treaty (BIT) practice of the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The analysis unveils two critical trends. First, GCC states are global champions of investment protection. In terms of protective features, their agreements are at par with the United States or Canada. In contrast to the latter, however, GCC states typically do Read More