This is a legal theory article on a methodology judges and arbitrators may use to balance interests in their decision making-process. Special consideration is given to the definition of the notion of interest, which lies between legal norms and facts, and its role in relation to vague or...

In this introduction to the Special Issue "Empirical Studies on Investment Disputes", we offer a new heuristic model to structure the thinking about investment arbitration. Investment arbitration is presented here as a political system in a sense inspired by David Easton's landmark theory: it...

Investment arbitrations should not happen too often, because they are costly processes for both parties. Yet they regularly happen. Why? We investigate the hypothesis that investment arbitrations are used as a means of last resort, after dissuasion has failed, and that dissuasion is most likely...

This article discusses axiological interferences of conceptions of justice associated with the nation-state in epistemological projects on transnational commercial law. It argues that the justice beliefs underlying classical legal positivism, which make us see law exclusively in state law,...

This article reviews legal scholars' key prudential and moral reasons to oppose the view that law can exist without the state. After a discussion of the real-world impact of views on what counts as law, the article discusses the following grounds for resistance to stateless law: law as something...

Scholarship on international investment arbitration is plentiful. Despite it being a relatively young field, it would be difficult to name one in which more books and articles have been published in recent years. The field is a dynamic one, attracting a diverse range of authors; the stakes are...

Consistency in decision-making is generally considered to be a good thing. It is largely considered to be a paradigm of good decision-making. Investment arbitrators often rely on this idea to cite prior cases (precedents, in a non-technical meaning), and follow some of them. But is consistency...

This essay (meant for a forthcoming and at this stage undisclosed Festschrift) sketches a preliminary examination of the type of social order that hybrid international commercial courts might contribute to creating or sustaining. It starts by reviewing the arguments advanced, implicitly or...