Last week has been described as a watershed moment for ISDS reform. During a meeting in Vienna, states decided by consensus on the desirability of developing reforms in UNCITRAL with respect to investor-state arbitration. States now have an opportunity to make proposals for a work plan about what reforms to consider and how to go about considering them. To the extent that the tide has turned on traditional investor-state arbitration, it is now up to states to tell us where they want to sail. As you might imagine, reaching a decision like this involved quite a process, along with a lot of politics. In this blog, I set out the process in terms of what was decided in Vienna, what was not decided, and what the next steps will be for moving forward in 2019. In the next blog, I will provide some context to this development, giving some insights into the politics of the process as well as some projections about how this process might develop. This reform process will…
Inter-State Arbitration
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Can’t Fight the Moonlight? Actually, You Can: ICJ Judges to Stop Acting as Arbitrators in Investor-State Disputes
The earthquake started in earnest in November 2017. At its epicentre was a report, published in November 2017 by two researchers at the International Institute for Sustainable Development ("IISD"). In the report, titled "Is 'Moonlighting' a Problem? The role of ICJ Judges in ISDS", researchers Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder and Martin Dietrich Brauch analysed the contents of several public databases…
New Restrictions on Arbitral Appointments for Sitting ICJ Judges
Editor’s Note: This week, in a trio of posts by Callum Musto, Marie Davoise, and Frederic Sourgens, we facilitate discussion on the nature of the International Court of Justice’s judicial function, and the occasional international arbitration appointments accepted by individual judges of the World Court. In view of H.E. President Yusuf’s October 2018 report to the U.N.
Insights from the Bifurcation Order in the Ukraine vs. Russia Arbitration under Annex VII of UNCLOS
By Procedural Order of 20 August 2018 (“Bifurcation Order”), the arbitral tribunal established under Part XV and Annex VII of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in the “Dispute Concerning Coastal State Rights in the Black Sea, Sea of Azov, and Kerch Strait (Ukraine v. the Russian Federation)” ordered a bifurcation of…
Crimea Investment Disputes: are jurisdictional hurdles being overcome too easily?
In February-March 2014, Crimea experienced what is here neutrally referred to as a ‘change of effective sovereign’ (as conceded by Ukraine itself). Subsequent events have given rise to at least nine investment claims by Ukrainian nationals against Russia in connection with their investments in Crimea made prior to the ‘change of effective sovereign’. Substantively, all cases pivot on…