Investor-state arbitration, also called investment arbitration, is often accused of harming developing states facing economic hardship, for the benefit of a wealthy few from the Global North. Its proponents respond that it is the only available means to resolve disputes impartially, and that its...

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...

We now have a total of more than 650 investment arbitration claims. The number of countries targeted by arbitration is on the rise, both in the developing and developed worlds, and has reached a total of more than 100 states. Given the hard economic times that most countries have been going...

This chapter suggests that political systems theory allows us to make better sense of the fragmented understanding we have today of investment law in general and of investment arbitration in particular. Relying on a theory by David Easton, the chapter presents investment arbitration as a...

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...

The IR literature has paid little attention to questions related to boundaries between international organizations. This paper aims at to contribute to the literature by providing a framework of analysis. After conceptualizing various border dynamics and outcomes, the paper outlines conditioning...

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...

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...