Anthea Roberts
About/Bio
Anthea Roberts is a Professor at School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) at the Australian National University and a Visiting Professor for the Masters of International Dispute Settlement at the Graduate Institute and the University of Geneva. Anthea attends UNCITRAL Working Group III as part of the Australian delegation but she acts and writes in her independent academic capacity. She is a specialist in public international law, investment treaty law and arbitration, comparative international law and geoeconomics. Prior to joining the ANU, Anthea taught at the London School of Economics, Columbia Law School and Harvard Law School. She is serving or has served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of International Law, the European Journal of International Law, the Journal of World Trade and Investment and ICSID Review. She is also a Contributing Editor for EJIL: Talk! and International Economic and Policy Law Blog and a Reporter for the Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States. Follow Anthea on @AntheaERoberts.
Recently Published
UNCITRAL and ISDS Reform (Hybrid): Islands of Persuasion
Since UNCITRAL Working Group III opened its most recent session on 14 February, many delegates began their interventions by wishing each other a Happy Valentine’s Day. As they did this, we recalled our blog after the first virtual session, in which we wrote that moving online was “like entering into a long distance relationship that remains fueled…
UNCITRAL and ISDS Reform (Hybrid): Season 5 – Watching the Grass Grow
Watching UNCITRAL Working Group III over the years has been a bit like viewing a long-running television series. The beginning of the process was exciting as we met a compelling cast of characters and the plot line began to take shape. Sometimes there was high drama: Which actors would support which kinds of reforms? Which ones would oppose…
UNCITRAL and ISDS Reform (Online): Crossing the Chasm
To text or not to text? That is the question. Or, rather, that was the question at UNCITRAL when Working Group III resumed its deliberations online last week. The Working Group’s focus was structural reforms, first selection and appointment of permanent or fixed-term adjudicators, then an appellate mechanism. As readers of this series know well, states hold different…
Popular articles by Anthea Roberts
Being Charged by an Elephant: A story of globalization and inequality
April 19, 2017
Anthea Roberts
Along with many economists and globalization scholars, my favorite graph these days is the elephant graph. Named for its distinctive elephant-shaped curve (see below), this graph shows the rise in real incomes for people in different income brackets throughout the world over a twenty year period of intense economic globalization (1998 to 2008). Economists often like to…
UNCITRAL and ISDS Reform: China’s Proposal
On 19 July 2019, China submitted its proposal on investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) reform to UNCITRAL. A Chinese version is available, though an English translation is yet to be posted. China reaffirms its commitment to ISDS as an important mechanism for resolving investor-state disputes under public international law. However, it takes note of significant…
UNCITRAL and ISDS Reform: Plausible Folk Theories
As observers of the UNCITRAL process, we watch the debates with great interest, writing about the emergence of different camps, giving perspectives on how the process fits within broader geopolitical developments, and offering potential models for moving forward. One thing that we are often struck by is how some of the field’s underlying narratives are…