Judicial acts of states are becoming increasingly subjected to international investment claims. This book focuses on distinctive particularities of these claims. Although there are no special responsibility regimes for different functions of the state, the application of investment treaty standards and the threshold for their breach may vary depending on the function involved. Accordingly, in order for the state to incur responsibility for a wrongful act committed in the exercise of its judicial function, there are some specific conditions that should be met: the investor must establish that the state is responsible for a breach attributable to the state; the investment tribunal has jurisdiction over the particular dispute; and the damage that the investor has suffered is a result of the particular breach. Berk Demirkol addresses questions in relation to the substance, jurisdiction, admissibility, and remedies in cases where state responsibility arises from a wrongful judicial act.

The recent explosion of investment treaty arbitration marks a revolutionary change in both international and public law, above all because it demonstrates how states have unwittingly privatized key powers of the courts in public law. This book outlines investment treaty arbitration as a public law system, by precisely demonstrating the significance of giving arbitrators comprehensive jurisdiction to decide regulatory disputes between business and state. In doing so, it exposes some startling consequences of transplanting rules of commercial arbitration into the regulatory sphere. First, private arbitrators can award compensation to investors in ways that go well beyond domestic systems of state liability in public law. Second, these awards can be enforced in as many as 165 countries, making them more widely enforceable than other judicial decisions in public law. Third, public law can be interpreted in private as a matter of course, without any appeal to a court to correct errors of law. The conflict between private arbitration and public law poses a serious challenge to open and accountable judging. But the critical flaw of the system - hitherto neglected - is its threat to judicial independence based on security of tenure. Under investment treaties, business claims against the state are decided by privately-contracted adjudicators, who win appointments only as more claims are brought. Thus, as the book explains, the 'judge' has a financial stake in how public law is interpreted and in the outcome of the dispute. While it is laudable to use international adjudication to resolve controversial disputes, the benefits of a global economy are no excuse for corrupting our historic tradition of independent courts.

Investment arbitrators rely on sovereignty for their legal status just as investor-state disputes usually stem from disagreements about the role of the state in society. As a result, investment arbitration is a vehicle for the exercise of sovereign authority and a site for contesting sovereign choices. This book investigates and evaluates the decision-making record and policy trajectory of international investment arbitration, from theoretical, doctrinal, and empirical perspectives. It analyses the extent to which the system used to resolve disputes impacts on the role of government, affecting diverse constituencies, as opposed to limiting itself to case-specific disputes between a single business enterprise and state entity. The book provides a comprehensive review of known awards in order to determine the types of government measures that have triggered disputes. It investigates how investment arbitrators have exercised their authority in recent case law. It provides a review of the approaches adopted in the reasoning of investment treaty tribunals on questions of judicial deference and respect for sovereign decision-makers. In doing so, it determines whether investment tribunals have taken a predominantly assertive approach to investor protection, without regard to their relative lack of accountability, capacity, or proximity in some cases. This approach does not sit comfortably with the relative restraint seen by domestic and international courts in similar contexts. The book argues that the unique characteristics of investment treaty arbitration make the experience of domestic judicial review more pertinent to international investment arbitration than to any other contexts for international adjudication. However, it argues that mediating devices in some form should be incorporated into the process in order to solve the tension between the extensive scope and potency of international investment arbitration as an important site of global governance, and the challenges of the review function in reviewing decisions which have strong claims to having comprehensive regulatory expertise, inclusive decision-making, electoral or other public accountability, or greater proximity to the underlying facts and context. Online Appendices

Today thousands of investors act globally in markets providing services, technology or capital in countries all around the world. This activity can be peacefully accomplished when both the investor and the host State know that the disputes will be resolved under the aegis of the investor-State arbitration regime, wherein an investor is provided with a direct right of action against a State, most commonly stemming from a bilateral or multilateral investment treaty. This book approaches the substantive and sometimes difficult concepts of investor-State arbitration in a clear and concise explanatory fashion. In the course of acquainting the reader with the basic legal concepts and policies of the regime, the authors address such issues as the following: • consent to jurisdiction; • State responsibility; • possible conflict of interests; • mechanisms for reviewing an award; • damages and costs; and • enforcement. The book examines a number of arbitration procedures arising from various perspectives with differing underlying assumptions while highlighting important cases. Given that investor-State arbitration is now under the public watch and facing many challenges, this remarkably clear and concise overview of the regime will prove to be of great value to in-house counsel and other practitioners, as well as to government policymakers and students.x`

This book addresses the interactions between the domestic courts and the international investment arbitral tribunals, one of the most pressing issues confronting both domestic legal systems and the international legal system. It deals with the core issues inherent in the above interactions, especially with regard to countries outside the ICSID system. It contrasts this narrative with the position under classical international investment law, where national courts are assigned a very specific and minimalistic role in the process of investment disputes settlement. For this purpose, the book chooses India, which follows the non-ICSID model, as the major point of focus and considers both domestic judicial decisions and investment arbitral decisions for critical analysis. The ICSID Convention grants limited powers to domestic courts to issue provisional measures and to enforce ICSID awards. As the central theme of the book lies at the intersection of domestic law and international law, the work is indispensable for any scholar working in the areas of general international law, international investment law, international economic law, law and economics, international dispute settlement, or international law in domestic courts, as well as domestic judges and international arbitrators. Further, as the subject matter has great implications for both domestic and global governance, it will benefit civil servants, opinion leaders, policy planners and subject experts in economics, the political economy and regional studies, to name a few. Excerpt from the Foreword: “One of the great merits of this book is that... It looks at bilateral investment treaties themselves to probe more deeply into the role of national courts in investment arbitration... This masterful book fills a major void as a resource in Indian international arbitration law. But is also the prototype of what any serious inquiry into the judicial role in investor-State arbitration in any jurisdiction should look like...” - George A. Bermann, Walter Gellhorn Professor of Law and Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law, Columbia Law School, USA

Investment Treaty Arbitration is an excellent teaching tool for lecturers and readers of international investment arbitration. This casebook includes over 40 exercises based on real-life disputes, helping readers evaluate and analyse all aspects of the topic.

Transnational investment involves a variety of actors (States, public and private legal entities, and natural persons) whose relationships are governed by rules and legal instruments belonging to different legal systems. This book provides a systematic study of the sources of rights and obligations in the field of transnational investment, and their coordination and interaction. It focuses primarily on the network of over 3,000 Bilateral Investment Treaties, international investment contracts, customary international law, the main multilateral treaties, national legislation, international case law and general principles of law. The book, firmly based on State practice, arbitral awards and national decisions, is indispensable to fully appraise the nature and content of the claims of private investors as well as to identify the law applicable in investment arbitration.