Increasing moves away from multilateralism have created a fragmented trade and investment scenario where economies progressively combine the application of restrictive unilateral actions with bilateral and regional preferences. The application of, and exceptions to, the non-discrimination...

This article is purposed to introduce an upcoming research starting in September, 2013 on a complex issue arising in the theory and practice of modern investor-state arbitration. To this end, readers are encouraged to treat this research summary as interactive and to contact the author with...

This chapter surveys empirically the broad features of trade policy in goods for 31 major economies that collectively represented 83% of the world's population and 91% of the world's GDP in 2013. We address five questions: Do some countries have more liberal trading regimes than others? Within...

This issue paper, titled “Legal and Systemic Contested issues in Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and WTO Rules: Which Way Now?”, and written by Dr Cosmas Milton Obote O’chieng, is a contribution to this process. The paper provides a legal analysis of some systemic issues regarding...

In international law, all tribunals, whether arbitral or judicial, are of attributed jurisdiction. The attribution of this jurisdiction is based on state consent and is limited by the terms thereof. Yet, the rigours of state consent to investment dispute settlement have been eroded through the...

This article analyses whether the ICJ Judgment in Georgia v Russia has contributed to the forming of any new trend in investment treaty arbitration. It first presents the approach adopted by the ICJ as to the characterisation of procedural requirements. Second, the interpretation of such...

Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) provide investors in natural resource projects with stability. Specifically, dispute settlement provisions, a feature of most modern BITs, allow investors to make claims against the host state for alleged breaches of the BIT However, some such provisions...

The WTO has not been able to recover since the collapse of the Doha Round in July 2008. Several ministerial conferences including the Buenos Aires meeting in December 2017 failed to reach agreement. The US Trump Administration launched a campaign to reform the WTO in 2018 and 2019. This book...