Last month, ICSID published a further Working Paper (WP4) linked to its ongoing reform process, by which it is considering a series of amendments to the ICSID and ICSID Additional Facility Rules. The Working Paper is the fourth in a series of working papers, preceded by Working Papers 1 (August 2018), 2 (March 2019), and…

In a previous post, which discussed the Ballantines award, the author concluded that doors for dual nationals’ claims are being closed, including for non-ICSID cases where the relevant treaty does not have a provision dealing with the issue. The recent Heemsen v. Venezuela jurisdictional award confirms this approach. Unanimously, a PCA tribunal declined jurisdiction over…

The 98th Annual Meeting of the American Branch of the International Law Association (“ABILA”), known as ABILA’s International Law Weekend (“ILW”), took place in New York City on 10 – 12 October 2019. ILW, ABILA’s premiere annual event, featured 35 panels covering a broad range of topics of international law.1)The summary of the views expressed…

The growing public interest in investment treaties and investor-State dispute settlement has prompted an increasing number of States to open to public view aspects of investment treaty negotiations. During the negotiation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (‘TTIP’), for example, both the European Union and the United States sought to ‘maximise’ transparency in the…

The Arab Spring erupted in Tunisia in December 2010 and quickly spread to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and other countries of the Arab World in 2011 and 2012. As I wrote in a 2015 Kluwer Arbitration Blog post, The Evolution of Arbitration in the Arab World, the uprisings of the Arab Spring and the political…

Discussions of corruption carry strong moral sentiments.  After all, the abuse of public office for private gain erodes people’s trust in government and institutions, makes public policies less effective and fair, and siphons taxpayers’ money away from schools, roads, and hospitals. More generally, broad-based corruption weakens the foundations of a healthy economy, degrades social norms,…

The CERSA (CNRS- University Paris II Panthéon-Assas) organized its third event in a series of seminars on selected topics in international investment law and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) (for the report of the first seminar, see here). The seminar on Topical issues in ISDS: EU Investment Law was held in Paris on 7 February 2019…

Very rarely would a single arbitration-related decision produce as significant an impact as the judgment of the Court of Justice of European Union (“EU” and “CJEU” respectively) in the Achmea case did during 2018. We should not doubt that Achmea will remain a cornerstone issue in the world of arbitration for a long period of…