Those unfamiliar with civil law procedure rules followed by English courts may find it difficult to understand how to argue issues related to foreign law. Should lawyers representing the parties explain their own understanding of foreign law? Are they supposed to invite experts to do that? Do experts need to be admitted to practice in…
In my contribution to the UNCTAD’s Virtual IIA Conference 2020: “IIA Reform in Times of COVID-19,” I highlighted a few projects we recently concluded or are currently working on. Below is a video recording of the presentation and its transcript. Every crisis is also an opportunity. In the area of international investment law, the opportunity…
Today I made an intervention on corporate restructuring and frivolous claims during the session of the Working Group III: Investor-State Dispute Settlement Reform. Thank you Mr. Chair for the opportunity to address the distinguished audience. In its intervention, Australia mentioned the problem of corporate restructuring and frivolous claims. Indeed, efforts to create a new and…
Today I made an intervention as an observer at the UNCITRAL Working Group III session currently taking place in Vienna (in the online format). The representatives of Bahrain, Switzerland and other States mentioned in their session interventions that the situations were security for costs requested were granted. Now we actually have empirical data to back…
Yesterday, one of America’s greatest legal minds, Judge Stephen F. Williams for whom I had the honour to clerk in 2007 passed away because of COVID-19. A graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School with family roots going back to British settlers who arrived in America on the Mayflower, I knew him as a modest…
On 5 May 2020, 23 EU Member States signed an agreement for the termination of intra-EU bilateral investment treaties between EU Members (Termination Agreement). The British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) hosted a webinar on 1 June 2020 to discuss legal and practical consequences of the Termination Agreement. The webinar featured presentations from representatives…
Traditionally, nationality for corporate entities has been regulated by national law, often by reference to whether a corporation has a seat in a country or was incorporated under its laws. However, international investment law has departed from the generally accepted rules of international law on the nationality of corporate persons. Already in the 1960s, the…
On 30 April 2020, I spoke at a webinar on the interaction between public international law and the EU Investment screening mechanism organised by Maastricht University and the University of Southern Denmark, which was a part of the Common European Law on Investment Screening (CELIS) project. In 2019, the European Union established a framework for…
On 25 February 2020, we convened an Investment Treaty Forum event to discuss the investment policy of the United Kingdom following its exit from the European Union. The UK is getting ready to deliver on the ambitious promise to conclude new trade agreements with various countries around the world. Although the European Union rules did…
As the number of investor-state disputes grows, so does the number of applications for provisional measures. The recent empirical study conducted by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and White&Case suggests that investors were more than twice as likely to obtain positive decisions on their requests than respondent states. The study also showed that the geographical…