Oxford University Press has
published a new book on the history of international investment law.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Foreign investors have a
privileged position under investment treaties. They enjoy strong rights, have
no obligations, and can rely on a highly efficient enforcement mechanism:
investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Unsurprisingly, this extraordinary
status has made international investment law one of the most controversial
areas of the global economic order.
This book sheds new light on the
topic, by showing that foreign investor rights are not the result of
unpredicted arbitral interpretations, but rather the outcome of a world-making
project realized by a coalition of business leaders, bankers, and their lawyers
in the 1950s and 1960s. Some initiatives that these figures planned for did not
emerge, such as a multilateral investment convention, but they were successful
in developing a legal imagination that gradually occupied the space of
international investment law. They sought not only to set up a dispute
settlement mechanism but also to create a platform to ground their vision of foreign
investment relations. Tracing their normative project from the post-World War
II period, this book shows that the legal imagination of these business
leaders, bankers, and lawyers is remarkably similar to present ISDS practice.
Common to both is what they protect, such as foreign investors' legitimate
expectations, as well as what they silence or make invisible. Ultimate, this
book argues that our canon of imagination, of adjustment and potential reform,
remains closely associated with this world-making project of the 1950s and
1960s.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nicolás M. Perrone, Research
Associate Professor, Universidad Andres Bello, Viña del Mar, Chile
Nicolás M Perrone is a Research
Associate Professor at Universidad Andrés Bello, Chile. He has previously
taught at Durham University and Universidad Externado de Colombia. Nicolás has
been Visiting Professor at Universidad Nacional de San Martín, the
International University College of Turin, and Università del Piemonte
Orientale, a faculty member of the Institute for Global Law and Policy (Harvard
Law School) and a Visiting Lecturer at Xi'an Jiaotong School of Law. Nicolás
has also consulted for the OECD, and worked as a legal fellow for UNCTAD.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: A Legal Imagination
1:Foreign Investor Rights and
Investment Relations
2:The Norm Entrepreneurs of the
1950s and 1960s
3:Competing Imaginaries and the
1970s
4:The Rise of Investment Treaties
and ISDS in the 1990s and Since
5:ISDS in Action
6:Givings and ISDS
7:Local Communities and ISDS
Conclusion: Towards a New Legal
Imagination
More info here
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