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Empirically Evaluating Claims About Investment Treaty Arbitration, Susan Franck
Empirically Evaluating Claims About Investment Treaty Arbitration, Susan Franck
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
With the blossoming of empirical legal scholarship, there is an increased appreciation for the insights it offers issues of international importance. One area that can benefit from such inquiry is the resolution of disputes from investment treaties, which affects international relations, implicates international legality of domestic government conduct, and puts millions of taxpayer dollars at risk. While suggesting there has been a "litigation explosion", commentators make untested assertions about investment treaty disputes. Little empirical work transparently explores this area, however. As the first research that explains its methodology and results, this article is a modest attempt to evaluate claims about …
Integrating Investment Treaty Conflict And Dispute Systems Design, Susan Franck
Integrating Investment Treaty Conflict And Dispute Systems Design, Susan Franck
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
With the debate on the renewal of the Trade Promotion Authority Act, the proper terms of investment treaties - including dispute resolution provisions - have become an issue of public scrutiny. In a so-called litigation explosion, investors resolve disputes against host governments through international arbitration mechanisms in investment treaties; and there is little evidence of reliance on other processes like mediation. This escalation has lead to a teething period where parties and non-parties have expressed divergent views as to the efficacy, efficiency and fairness of the dispute resolution process. With billions of dollars and sovereignty at stake, the dispute resolution …
Using The Unidroit Principles To Fill Gaps In The Cisg, John Y. Gotanda
Using The Unidroit Principles To Fill Gaps In The Cisg, John Y. Gotanda
Working Paper Series
The United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG) sets forth only a basic framework for the recovery of damages, thereby giving a court of tribunal broad authority to determine an aggrieved party’s loss based on circumstances of the particular case. Unfortunately, the lack of specificity has resulted in much litigation, and seemingly conflicting results. To remedy this problem, some have argued that the gaps in the CISG damages provisions should be filled with the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts. In this paper, I argue that the gap-filling rules of CISG preclude the UNIDROIT Principles from being …
A Study Of Interest, John Y. Gotanda
A Study Of Interest, John Y. Gotanda
Working Paper Series
In recent years, a number of tribunals, mainly those deciding investment disputes, have re-examined traditional practices concerning the awarding of interest, particularly whether interest should be awarded at market rates and on a compounded basis. However, many tribunals deciding transnational contracts disputes continue to follow the practice of applying national laws on interest, which often results in the application of domestic statutory interest rates calling for a fixed rate of interest to accrue on a simple as opposed to compound basis. These statutory rates often do not change to reflect economic conditions and thus may under compensate or over compensate …
Moot Court In Global Language Of Trade, Mark R. Shulman
Moot Court In Global Language Of Trade, Mark R. Shulman
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Beyond Doha’S Promises: Administrative Barriers As An Obstruction To Development, Sungjoon Cho
Beyond Doha’S Promises: Administrative Barriers As An Obstruction To Development, Sungjoon Cho
All Faculty Scholarship
This article articulates the potentially fatal consequences of administrative barriers to the goal of developing poor countries and suggests retooling the current trade norms and policies in a developmentally-friendly manner. The article constructs the concept of administrative barriers centering on domestic regulations, i.e., antidumping measures, regulatory standards, and rules of origin, which have the most potential to obstruct development. It then highlights developmental hazards of these administrative barriers. It observes that both protectionist antidumping duties and the excruciating investigative procedures tend to offset developing countries' comparative advantages in favor of developed countries' domestic producers. It then argues that under-capacitated developing …
Doha’S Development, Sungjoon Cho
Doha’S Development, Sungjoon Cho
All Faculty Scholarship
This Essay argues that the current development crisis within the Doha Round is inextricably linked to the nature of modern day trade negotiations. This Round reveals a bargaining process in which the powerful can too easily exploit and prevail over the powerless. This process is also vulnerable to domestic political maneuvers such as capture. Under these circumstances, poor countries' development concerns are not well represented, which accounts, despite years of talks, for the current sorry state of the negotiational outcome on agricultural subsidies and tariffs. To overcome these flaws of trade negotiation, this Essay suggests that certain core legal precepts, …
Toward A New Economic Constitution: Judicial Disciplines On Trade Politics, Sungjoon Cho
Toward A New Economic Constitution: Judicial Disciplines On Trade Politics, Sungjoon Cho
All Faculty Scholarship
This article first observes that protectionism is an icon of trade politics and thus likely to gather fresh momentum as a domestic election approaches. The paper then problematizes protectionism beyond mere seasonal election politics by revealing its fatal pathologies both to the United States and to the rest of the world. Protectionism basically caters to the special interest at the expense of the larger public interest, which may be coined as a Madisonian constitutional failure. It also deviates from global trading norms, which the United States hypocritically continues to preach adherence to for the rest of the world. This double …
Mission Possible: Reciprocal Deference Between Domestic Regulatory Structures And The Wto, Elizabeth Trujillo
Mission Possible: Reciprocal Deference Between Domestic Regulatory Structures And The Wto, Elizabeth Trujillo
Faculty Scholarship
One of the goals of Article III of GATT is to invalidate domestic regulatory measures, including taxes and non-fiscal policies that amount to non-tariff barriers to trade (NTB) and therefore violate the principles of national treatment. While internal policies that directly discriminate between products based on nationality or origin are clearly in violation of national treatment principles, it is the facially neutral regulatory measures with protectionist and discriminatory effects that are more difficult to assess, even within transparent regulatory processes. However, with their emphasis on the likeness of the products in question, WTO panels run the risk of alienating member …
The Gats And Legal Services In Limerick, Laurel S. Terry
The Gats And Legal Services In Limerick, Laurel S. Terry
Faculty Scholarly Works
One of the most significant regulatory developments for legal services is their inclusion in the 1994 General Agreement on Trade in Services or GATS. The GATS was the first world trade agreement to cover services rather than goods and it applies to legal services. The GATS in Limerick is a light-hearted but nonetheless serious effort to address the most important legal services-related GATS developments in the last twelve years. These verses cover the basic principles of the GATS, the ongoing market access negotiations and the efforts to develop disciplines on domestic regulation.
Taming The Dragon: China's Experience In The Wto Dispute Settlement System, Henry Gao
Taming The Dragon: China's Experience In The Wto Dispute Settlement System, Henry Gao
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
To many observers, a major challenge raised by China's accession to the WTO is whether the WTO dispute settlement system could cope with China, one of the major traders in the world with an economy that is halfway between a planned economy and a market economy. In this article, the author tries to answer this question by reviewing China's experience in the WTO dispute settlement system. Historically, the senior leadership in China attached disproportionate importance to the WTO dispute settlement system and preferred to avoid using the system. Thus, in the first four cases in which China was sued or …
Foreign Direct Investment, Investment Treaty Arbitration, And The Rule Of Law, Susan Franck
Foreign Direct Investment, Investment Treaty Arbitration, And The Rule Of Law, Susan Franck
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
In the last decade, there has been a surge in the number of multi-lateral and bilateral investment treaties governments have signed; meanwhile there have been dramatic increases in the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI); and, more recently, the number of claims brought under investment treaties has spiked. This Article examines the relationship amongst these factors and is the first to review the emerging empirical economic literature investigating whether investment treaties achieve their goal of promoting FDI. The Article then specifically evaluates the impact that the procedural right to arbitrate investment claims plays in the process of promoting FDI and …