It is not unnoticed that good faith gained relevance in investment treaty arbitration. There is an increasing number of decisions where good faith was relied on by tribunals on the basis of Article 31(1) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (“VCLT”), the general rule of interpretation, according to which “[a] treaty shall…
The recent crisis between the Brazilian president Jair Messias Bolsonaro and the Brazilian national oil company Petrobras may result in a wave of investors’ claims submitted to arbitration against the Brazilian Federal Government for abuse of controlling power and breach of fiduciary duties under the Brazilian Companies Act 1976. During a live broadcast on February…
It is well settled in the practice of ICSID tribunals that the general rule of treaty interpretation embodied in Article 31(1) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (“Vienna Convention”) applies to the interpretation of the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States (“ICSID Convention”). While…
On 27 July 2015 the Bill amending to the Brazilian Arbitration Law will come into force, introducing significant changes in the arbitration legal framework, which, according to the stated purpose of the amendments, aim at improving the original Brazilian Arbitration Law, enacted in 1996. The amendments attempt to consolidate established practices as well as settling…
International investment law is shaped by key terms such as “investment”, “indirect expropriation”, “national treatment”, “most favored nation”, “fair and equitable treatment”, among others, which are at the heart of most investment treaties. But after 1959, when West Germany and Pakistan signed what is known as the first ever bilateral investment treaty, and, since then,…
It is well settled that there is no rule of precedent in investment arbitration and arbitrators are not bound by decisions rendered by previous tribunals. Nevertheless, investment arbitration practice shows that previous decisions are often observed and followed. Disputing parties and arbitrators devote significant attention to previous decisions and on several occasions arbitral tribunals rely…
One of the recurrent controversial issues in the investment arbitration practice relates to the application of the general rule of treaty interpretation of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties in the interpretation of the provisions of the ICSID Convention and of investment treaties in general. Thomas Wälde in one of his last writings…
A judge of the public law courts of the State of São Paulo concluded that a dispute arising out of a turn-key agreement entered into by a State-owned company and several construction companies for the construction of a new underground line in the city of São Paulo should not have been referred to arbitration. The…
