Event Title
The Overlapping Trade and Investment Regimes
Location
Benson Center
Event Website
http://law.scu.edu/investment/index.cfm
Start Date
1-2-2013 11:15 AM
End Date
1-2-2013 12:45 PM
Description
International trade and investment arbitration are distinct disciplines within the field of international economic law. Practitioners and scholars in one field rarely labor in the vineyards of the other. Yet the trade and investment regimes routinely overlap and are increasingly converging. The different regimes are often embedded in the same treaties, with one section of a treaty addressing investment protections and other sections addressing trade promotion. The different regimes incorporate similar substantive protections—particularly rules against discrimination—as well as similar exceptions from those rules, such as emergency clauses. They promote similar objectives—globalization, economic integration, trade promotion, and investment protection—over other government objectives, such as environmental protection, labor rights, or health and human safety. Both regimes provide for baseline protections—one in a multilateral treaty, the other as part of customary international law—but assume a patchwork of bilateral or regional arrangements that afford closer integration among allies. Both regimes use international tribunals as the vehicle for dispute settlement, allowing for judicial review of sovereign state violations of international law. These tribunals often cite to one another, creating an emerging international economic law jurisprudence. Both regimes use the economic leverage of tariff benefits to secure compliance with adverse judicial decisions. Both regimes are on the ascendance, with countries clamoring to reap the rewards of membership in each club.
There are, of course, numerous differences between the two regimes worthy of examination. But for purposes of this paper I wish to focus on the overlap and convergence between the trade and investment regimes, and the implications of such a development for each regime and for international law generally.
The Overlapping Trade and Investment Regimes
The Overlapping Trade and Investment Regimes
Benson Center
International trade and investment arbitration are distinct disciplines within the field of international economic law. Practitioners and scholars in one field rarely labor in the vineyards of the other. Yet the trade and investment regimes routinely overlap and are increasingly converging. The different regimes are often embedded in the same treaties, with one section of a treaty addressing investment protections and other sections addressing trade promotion. The different regimes incorporate similar substantive protections—particularly rules against discrimination—as well as similar exceptions from those rules, such as emergency clauses. They promote similar objectives—globalization, economic integration, trade promotion, and investment protection—over other government objectives, such as environmental protection, labor rights, or health and human safety. Both regimes provide for baseline protections—one in a multilateral treaty, the other as part of customary international law—but assume a patchwork of bilateral or regional arrangements that afford closer integration among allies. Both regimes use international tribunals as the vehicle for dispute settlement, allowing for judicial review of sovereign state violations of international law. These tribunals often cite to one another, creating an emerging international economic law jurisprudence. Both regimes use the economic leverage of tariff benefits to secure compliance with adverse judicial decisions. Both regimes are on the ascendance, with countries clamoring to reap the rewards of membership in each club.
There are, of course, numerous differences between the two regimes worthy of examination. But for purposes of this paper I wish to focus on the overlap and convergence between the trade and investment regimes, and the implications of such a development for each regime and for international law generally.
https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/globalevents/investment/symposia/5