Academic

Chang on Precedent in Investment Treaty Arbitration

By Lawrence Solum

Tai-Heng Cheng (New York Law School) has posted Is There a System of Precedent in Investment Treaty Arbitration? on SSRN.  Here is a taste (no abstract):

In my view, the key issue is not whether there is strict adherence to a doctrine of stare decisis. It is, instead, whether there is some clear legal method by which awards are rendered that accounts for prior publicly-availablepublicly available decisions. Only with such accounting will international investment law ? by which I mean principles and rules of public international law relevant to foreign investments ?be stable. This stability is necessary to promote certainty in investment outcomes and to protect the legitimacy of international investment law in the eyes of investors and host states. I propose to you that we do have a system of legal reasoning, in which prior decisions are accounted for, that is consistently applied to disputes. Over the next few minutes, I?d like to survey the relevant law and evidence as an aperitif to our discussions following this presentation.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on August 29, 2008 (boomark / email).