Law Commons^™

Justice And Investment Arbitration, Perry S. Bechky

Perry S. Bechky

Investment arbitration is rife with questions about justice. For example: Is it just to allow foreign investors to bring arbitral claims against states – especially when neither domestic investors nor persons other than investors aggrieved by state actions have any comparable access to arbitration? Do investment tribunals do justice between the parties? Do investment tribunals do justice to nonparties and, especially, the public interest? Are the particular forms and procedures of investment arbitration just?

This talk argues that investment arbitration affords a valuable mechanism for access to justice in a world of often-imperfect national courts. Nevertheless, investment arbitration is open …

International Adjudication Of Land Disputes: For Development And Transnationalism, Perry S. Bechky

Perry S. Bechky

This short article offers two observations about international adjudication of land disputes. First, the article shows that such adjudication is intended to further development, but that this goal is served better, if counter-intuitively, by rejecting the so-called Salini contribution-to-development test in favor of case-by-case adjudication on the merits. Second, the article locates such adjudication within the modern trend toward transnationalism, a trend that unites international investment law with human rights law. In light of these observations, the article concludes that international adjudication of land disputes may contribute to such human values as development, human rights, and the rule of law.

The Ponderosa Claim: Opic Concludes That Argentina Violated International Law, Perry S. Bechky

Perry S. Bechky

In 2005, the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (“OPIC”) determined that the Government of Argentina (the “GOA”) violated international law in its response to the 2001 financial crisis, by abrogating key provisions of the license that it had granted to operate the major natural gas pipeline in southern Argentina. This case note situates the OPIC determination with the contemporaneous investor-state arbitral claims brought by private investors directly against the GOA pursuant to the terms of a number of Argentina’s Bilateral Investment Treaties (“BITs”), and then offers several observations about the relationship between BITs and OPIC’s political-risk-insurance (“PRI”) in the modern …