The Aegean conflict constitutes a dispute that has been affecting Greek-Turkish bilateral relations for the last five decades. It involves elements such as sovereignty, sovereign rights and national security. This paper suggests that the Torres Strait Treaty, an international agreement that...

The effects of climate change on people's daily lives threaten the full enjoyment of human rights. The Human Rights Council adopted two landmark resolutions recognising the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment (Resolution 48/13), and establishing the mandate for a Special...

This article examines the decision of nations to enter reservations upon ratification of international human rights treaties. Reservations, I suggest, merely attempt to avoid international legal duties when they would be relevant in the framework of the human rights regime. I chose Iraq as an...

International investment agreements employ dispute settlement procedures that differ markedly from their counterparts in trade agreements along three key dimensions: standing (i.e., the right to file grievances), the nature of the remedy, and the remedial period. In the state-to-state dispute...

We study the incentives that governments have to protect intellectual property in a trading world economy. We consider a world economy with ongoing innovation in two countries that differ in market size, in their capacities for innovation, and in their absolute and comparative advantage in...

The reform option on the Standing Multilateral Mechanism (SMM) currently under discussion at UNCITRAL's Working Group III (WGIII) has raised a number of important, systemic concerns for the procedural reforms of investor-State dispute settlement. This paper first seeks to situate the discussions...

There are few areas of international law where confusion and clarity reign supreme more than that of the sources. One of the main sources of international law is international treaties acknowledged as a legal source by the Statute of the International Court of Justice. However, international...

Regional economic integration can be pursued either through an Intergovernmental or supranational approach. The economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was established by the founding Treaty of 1975 (the ECOWAS Treaty) to promote economic cooperation within the region.It is against...

Thailand signed its first trade treaty with a European power with Portugal in 1516. Treaties with Spain, the Dutch followed. Arguably the two most significant treaties signed by Thailand in historical times were the Bowring Treaty signed with the British in 1855 and the Treaty of Amity and...

This study analyses two aspects of China’s perspectives on public international law: the implementation mechanism that gives legal effect to international treaties within the Chinese domestic legal system and the views of Chinese international law scholars on the important foreign policy...

International investment agreements employ dispute settlement procedures that differ markedly from their counterparts in trade agreements. We develop parallel models of trade and investment agreements and employ them to study these differences. We find that many of the observed differences can...

International environmental agreements (IEAs) address cross-border public goods, therefore they are faced with free-riding problems. Generally, the incentives of states to comply with such treaties are low as the benefits of compliance do not always outweigh the cost. Previous literature has...

The transformation from Kyoto to Paris has been analysed by international relations scholars, international law, and transnational governance theory. The international relations literature looks at the climate regime from a perspective of power distribution, state interests, institutions, and...

This paper analyzes the impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on sovereign bond returns of 25 emerging markets from 1993 to 2016. Under a BIT, foreign investors can use an international arbitration scheme to enforce compensation claims against the domestic government in case of direct...

Because trucks in Bangladesh and India are not allowed to operate across the border, cargo is transloaded at the border, and Indian trucks traveling between northeast India and the rest of India must go around Bangladesh through the Siliguri Corridor, which significantly increases transport and...

Improper acquisition of genetic resources (GRs) and associated traditional knowledge (TK) without prior informed consent and on mutually agreed terms, in accordance with national laws of the country providing the GR and associated TK, as well as without any fair and equitable sharing of the...

In this paper, we study the impacts of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) between the EU countries and China on EU home investments. We consider BITs as "treatments" that provide further access to global value chains (GVCs). We identify the causal impacts of the BITs on the relationship...

The internationalization of cities and the constitution of a new international space of power involves a much more expressive number of cities than the usual global cities. Nowadays, dozens of international organizations are composed of regional capitals, medium, and even small cities. With...

Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA) are part of the foundation of agriculture and of central importance to food sovereignty. These gain an increasingly pivotal role in the context of climate crises, which are threatening predictable crop production, and the erosion of...

This article examines the consequences of the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU) ruling in Achmea concerning Investor-State Arbitration (ISA) under intra-EU Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) from a treaty law perspective. It begins by briefly setting out the arguments of...

Intellectual property treaties have two main types of provisions: national treatment of foreign inventors, and harmonization of protections. I address the positive question of when countries would want to treat foreign inventors the same as domestic inventors, and how their incentive to do so...

Due diligence standards have been read into treaty provisions for the protection for the environment and beyond in a wide range of international legal settings. The compliance provision of the Madrid Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, Article 13, invites a similar...

This is a comparative study on what is meant by sustainable development and the role of investment treaties. By examining the position of South Africa and Kenya, it ventures to scrutinize Bilateral Investment Treaties and whether they contribute to sustainable development. The two countries are...

This aim of this working paper is to present a review of the economic diplomacy (ED) literature. ED has adorned an increasing importance in international political economy and in inter-state relations, which has increased the multi-stakeholder nature of ED engagement, and brought with it a shift...

International trade and investment agreements are problematic from a participatory rights perspective because they are typically negotiated without adequate opportunities for participation of the public. Such agreements provide for disputes concerning public policy to be decided by private...

The ECT hinders EU climate and investment policy objectives. This piece explores the low likelihood of successful “modernization,” the EU’s role in convincing partners that it would be best to terminate the ECT, and steps for the EU to exit the treaty and neutralize its sunset clause

We study the incentives that governments have to protect intellectual property in a trading world economy. We consider a world economy with ongoing innovation in two countries that differ in market size and in their capacities for innovation. After describing the determination of national patent...

This article proposes a rule of contractual interpretation for regulatory contracts defined as contracts 1) used by a large number of market participants, 2) subject to limitations on deviation, and 3) designed with market problems (such as negative externalities) in addition to transactional...

We explore the relationship between international policy coordination and domestic policy credibility when both must be self-supporting. Our arguments are presented in the context of a two-country, two-period model of dynamic emission abatement with transboundary pollution, where government...

In this report we present the results of our econometric investigation of the role of (1) stabilisation and association agreements (SAAs), (2) bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and (3) free trade agreements (FTAs) in the Western Balkans and their impact on the region's inward foreign direct...

International investment agreements employ dispute settlement procedures that differ markedly from their counterparts in trade agreements along three key dimensions: standing (i.e., the right to file grievances), the nature of the remedy, and the remedial period. In the state-to-state dispute...

International investment agreements employ dispute settlement procedures that differ markedly from their counterparts in trade agreements along three key dimensions: standing (i.e., the right to file grievances), the nature of the remedy, and the remedial period. In the state-to-state dispute...

Using event study methodology, we investigate whether bilateral investment protection treaties afford protection to foreign investors. Examining arbitral decisions for firms from six countries shows that firms that received awards from arbitrators gained in market value by as much as 3%. Per...

Wie die künftige Handelspolitik Europas aussehen oder in Sicherheits- und Klimafragen gehandelt werden sollte, ist aktuell zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich heftig umstritten. Diese Themen berühren im Rahmen der ganzheitlichen Agenda 2030 für nachhaltige Entwicklung auch die...