Book Title: Rethinking Investment Law

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Abstract: If multinational corporations and their home states lack the ability to use force to conquer, as their predecessors did, they can still exercise control over the economies of other states by other means. International investment law serves this purpose by maintaining norms that favour these actors. Dispute settlement based on investment arbitration lacks the requisite neutrality to adjudicate investment claims impartially. Instead, investment arbitration has fostered a culture of investment protection. Even with so-called ‘balanced’ treaties, the new factors that are supposed to be considered rarely limit arbitral discretion. Instead, as the Eco Oro v Colombia award illustrates, environmentally unsound development can be used to justify damages for the investor. Tinkering with the regime will not address its main flaws. As long as its standards of treatment and current means of dispute settlement are intact, the regime will continue to produce suffering.