International Arbitration

Hong Kong, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Foreign Investment Protection

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (“TPP”), which was signed in November 2015 by the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Japan, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Vietnam, has increased public awareness of the technocratic and often obscure world of international trade and investment deals.
But whereas the TPP’s political and strategic implications in Asia and the Pacific are being widely debated in the newspapers, less consideration has been given to how the TPP would (if and when it comes into force) become part of a growing network of investment protection treaties in the region. Read More…

Investor-State Dispute Settlement under Investment Treaties and Free Trade Agreements: ad hoc Arbitration or Investment Court System?

ad hoc investor-State arbitration with a permanent, multilateral investment court.
Investor-State dispute settlement (“ISDS”) has come a long way from its foundations in the mid-Eighteenth Century, when the idea of State responsibility for injury to aliens and their property began to emerge. This once esoteric area of international practice is now undergoing a period of re-evaluation, for the first time under intense public scrutiny. A particular focus is on the form that ISDS should take in future trade and investment treaties, with the European Commission and Canadian Government advocating the replacement of the prevailing system of 
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