Joshua Paine
About/Bio
Joshua Paine is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on international investment law, international trade law, and international dispute settlement. He has published widely in these fields in leading peer-reviewed journals and in edited volumes. His first book, The Functions of International Adjudication and International Environmental Litigation (Cambridge University Press 2024), was awarded 2nd prize in the 2024 Society of Legal Scholars Brazier book prize for Outstanding Mid-Career Scholarship. For his research on a climate carve-out for investment treaties, Josh was awarded (with co-author Elizabeth Sheargold) the 2023 John H Jackson Prize of the Journal of International Economic Law.
Recently Published
A Multilateral Instrument on ISDS Reform (MIIR): Selected Design Issues
June 3, 2025
Joshua Paine
Introduction This post addresses issues being considered in the UNCITRAL Working Group III process in relation to the design of a multilateral instrument on investor–State dispute settlement (ISDS) reform (hereinafter an ‘MIIR’). An MIIR is envisioned as the legal mechanism for applying the various reform options being developed by UNCITRAL Working Group III to the extensive…
The ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Change: Selected Issues of Treaty Interpretation
June 3, 2024
Joshua Paine
Introduction This post analyses selected treaty interpretation issues in the ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Change, delivered on 21 May 2024. The post does not seek to summarise nor address all issues raised by the Advisory Opinion. Instead, the aim is to analyse certain issues of treaty interpretation that arose at numerous points in the…
Shoehorning Substance into a Procedural Mandate? The Right to Regulate and UNCITRAL Working Group III
This post addresses Draft Provision 12, on ‘Right to Regulate’, in the recent ‘Draft Provisions on Procedural and Cross-Cutting Issues’ that were published by the UNCITRAL Secretariat in late July and will be discussed at UNCITRAL Working Group III’s next session in October 2023 (A/CN.9/WG.III/WP.229 [11]). The Draft Provisions have been ‘prepared…
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Popular articles by Joshua Paine
The ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Change: Selected Issues of Treaty Interpretation
June 3, 2024
Joshua Paine
Introduction This post analyses selected treaty interpretation issues in the ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Change, delivered on 21 May 2024. The post does not seek to summarise nor address all issues raised by the Advisory Opinion. Instead, the aim is to analyse certain issues of treaty interpretation that arose at numerous points in the…
Environmental Aspects of the South China Sea Award
July 21, 2016
Joshua Paine
Earlier posts (here and here) have provided a general overview of the much-anticipated 12 July Award of an UNCLOS Annex VII Tribunal in the Philippines v China case. This post will focus on the environmental aspects of the Award. The Tribunal’s consideration of environmental issues is largely contained in the part of the Award dealing…
Cairn Energy v India: Retroactive Taxation, Fair and Equitable Treatment and the General Principles Method
January 13, 2021
Joshua Paine
This post addresses an Award of 21 December 2020 in Cairn Energy v India, a case under the UK–India BIT. The headline outcome of the Award is that India’s retroactive application of taxation legislation, that subsequently imposed taxes on the transactions of the claimants that were not taxable at the time the transactions occurred, constituted a…