In 2016 and 2017, states continued their engagement with international investment law. A small minority of states displayed scepticism or tried to disengage themselves from their investment law obligations. This chapter addresses select institutional developments in international investment law...

The ongoing reform of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) underlines the pertinence of an old question that has received various and conflicting answers: is investment arbitration a public or a private method of dispute settlement? A key criticism levelled at investment treaty arbitration...

Over the years, the substantive content of international investment agreements (IIAs) has shifted to reflect political change and to respond to lessons learnt in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). With a focus on eight IIAs, selected with a view to geographical representativeness, this...

This paper reviews the relationship between international investment agreements (IIAs) and foreign direct investment (FDI). It is organised in two parts. The first part explores the generic structure of IIAs and highlights the components that are particularly relevant to FDI. It then gives an...

Since the inception of the international investment law system, investment promotion and protection have been the raison d’être of investment treaties and states have confined their policy space in order to attract foreign investment and protect their investors abroad. Languishing in relative...

Notorious for its non-participation in the international system of investment protections, Brazil is one of the most popular destinations for foreign direct investment (FDI) around the world. But unlike most countries, including its neighbours in Latin America, Brazil is neither party to any...

In recent years, the negotiation and conclusion of international investment agreements (IIAs) in Latin America has gone hand-in-hand with a rethinking of investment standards and the elaboration of new IIA models. This is evident, among others, in Brazil’s cooperation and facilitation...

Over the last few years, the right to regulate has evolved from a rather inconspicuous, mistrusted concept to a necessary component of international investment agreements. This brief study offers a complementary account of the right to regulate compared to the author’s treatment of the topic a...

Based on a comprehensive treaty survey, the article presents the general approaches to sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Chinese International Investment Agreements (IIAs). With the global trend towards investor responsibilisation, a new generation of investment policies places inclusive...

This article reports on a study of potential systemic bias in the resolution of ambiguous legal issues by investment treaty arbitrators. It outlines tentative but significant findings that the arbitrators in general tended to favour (a) foreign investors over states in general, (b) foreign...