The Evolving International Investment Regime: Expectations, Realities, Options

With the growth of the global economy over the past two decades, foreign direct investment (FDI) laws, at both the national and international levels, have undergone rapid development in order to strengthen the protection standards for foreign investors. In terms of international investment law, a network of international investment agreements has arisen as a way to address FDI growth. FDI backlash, reflective of more restrictive regulation, has also emerged. The Evolving International Investment Regime analyzes the existing challenges to the international investment regime, and addresses these challenges going forward. It also examines the dynamics of the international regime, as well as a broader view of the changing global economic reality both in the United States and in other countries. The content for the book is a compendium of articles by leading thinkers, originating from the International Investment Conference "What's New in International Investment Law and Policy?"

Table of Contents:
Foreword James Crawford Preface Louis T. Wells Acknowledgments Editors and Contributors Introduction: International Investment Law in Transition Karl P. Sauvant and José E. Alvarez The Context: Foreign Investment and the Changing Global Economic Reality Jeffrey D. Sachs Part I Stakeholder Expectations in the International Investment Regime 1.1 What Do Developing Countries Expect from the International Investment Regime? Roberto Echandi 1.2 Civil Society Perspectives: What Do Key Stakeholders Expect from the International Investment Regime? Howard Mann 1.3 Regulating Multinationals: Foreign Investment, Development, and the Balance of Corporate and Home Country Rights and Responsibilities in a Globalizing World Peter T. Muchlinski 1.4 On the Perceived Inconsistency in Investor-State Jurisprudence Stanimir A. Alexandrov Part II Reforming the FDI Regime: Avenues to Consider 2.1 Considering Recalibration of International Investment Agreements: Empirical Insights Susan D. Franck 2.2 All Clear on the Investment Front: A Plea for a Restatement Petros C. Mavroidis 2.3 Legal Developments in U.S. National Security Reviews of Foreign Direct Investment (2006DS2008) John Cobau 2.4 Challenges and Prospects Facing the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes Nassib G. Ziadé 2.5 The Changing Political Economy of Foreign Investment: Finding a Balance Between Hard and Soft Forms of Regulation John H. Dunning and Sarianna M. Lundan 2.6 Multilateral Approaches to Investment: The Way Forward Rainer Geiger 2.7 The Future of International Investment Law: A Balance Between the Protection of Investors and the States' Capacity to Regulate Brigitte Stern 2.8 International Investment Rulemaking at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century: Stocktaking and Options for the Way Forward James Zhan, Jorg Weber, and Joachim Karl Part III Report of the Rapporteur 3.1 Improving the International Investment Law and Policy System Report of the Rapporteur Second Columbia International Investment Conference: What's Next in International Investment Law and Policy? Andrea K. Bjorklund Index

About the Author :
Jose E. Alvarez is the Herbert and Rose Rubin Professor of International Law at New York University Law School. At NYU he teaches courses on international law, foreign investment, and international organizations. He is also serving as special adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on a pro bono basis. Professor Alvarez was formerly the Hamilton Fish Professor of International Law and Diplomacy and the executive director of the Center on Global Legal Problems at Columbia Law School, a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, an associate professor at the George Washington University's National Law Center, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law Center. Prior to entering academia in 1989, Professor Alvarez was an attorney adviser with the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State where he worked on cases before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, served on the negotiation teams for bilateral investment treaties and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, and was legal adviser to the administration of justice program in Latin America coordinated by the Agency of International Development. Professor Alvarez has also been in private practice and was a judicial clerk to the late Hon. Thomas Gibbs Gee of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. He served as President of the American Society of International Law from 2006-08. His recently concluded set of lectures at The Hague Academy of International Law, concerning the public international law governing international investment, are expected to be published in book form in late 2010. Prof. Alvarez's book, International Organizations as Law-Makers, was published in paperback in 2006. He was educated at Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Oxford University. Karl P. Sauvant is Resident Senior Fellow and Founding Executive Director of the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment, Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, and Guest Professor at Nankai University, China. Until July 2005, he was Director of UNCTAD's Division on Investment, Technology and Enterprise Development (DITE), the focal point in the UN system for matters related to foreign direct investment (FDI) and technology, as well as a major interface with the private sector. While at the UN, he created (in 1991) the prestigious annual United Nations publication the World Investment Report, of which he was the lead author until 2005, and (in 1992) the journal Transnational Corporations, serving as its editor. He provided intellectual leadership and guidance to a series of 25 monographs on key issues related to international investment agreements (which were published in 2004/05 in three volumes), and he edited (together with John Dunning) a 20-volume Library on Transnational Corporations (published by Routledge). Dr. Sauvant joined the United Nations in 1973 and, as of 1975, has focused his work on matters related to FDI. Since 1988, he was responsible for the Organization's policy analysis work on FDI. In 2001, he became Director of DITE. His responsibilities included managing the Division; promoting international consensus-building in the areas of FDI, technology and enterprise development; providing intellectual leadership for policy-oriented research; and conceptualizing and supervising technical assistance activities in this field. Apart from his work for the United Nations, he has published extensively on issues related to economic development, FDI and services. His name is associated with some 150 United Nations publications on FDI over the past three decades. Dr. Sauvant received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a national of Germany.

Review :
"The field of investment treaty arbitration has in a very short time span generated an astonishing volume of literature. What distinguishes this book is the effort deployed by many of the commentators to take a broad view and to appraise the system as it has appeared and as it may be evolving, in light of what they perceive as its effect on the policies of the world community. A very substantial range of disciplines and experience is represented here, and their analysis and prescriptions are often provocative, leading to greater insight through the confrontation of competing perspectives and priorities." --Jan Paulsson Principal consultant, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP "The Evolving International Investment Regime is bound to become the reference book for anyone interested in the future of one of the most dynamic fields of international economic law. Scholars and practitioners have combined efforts in this lucid analysis of the most salient features of international investment law. This book will appeal to anyone with an interest in the current problems of the emerging international investment regime." --August Reinisch Professor, University of Vienna "This remarkable collection provides important insights into the causes and implications of the changing patterns of international investment law. It explores the varied perspectives and claims of the main stakeholders in the system, including foreign investors, capital exporting and importing states as well as civil society. Most importantly perhaps, the collection comprises not only rigorous legal analysis but also draws on key insights from other disciplines. Inter-disciplinary analysis of this sort is surprisingly absent in much of the commentary on international investment law. This distinction in the methodology of the present work makes the underlying analysis all the richer and more compelling." --Jürgen Kurtz Associate Professor, University of Melbourne Law School "The Evolving International Investment Regime manages to embed the international investment regime into its political and economic context, to unveil the challenges the system faces, and to propose a rich set of ideas for possible reform. It shows how varied the factors impacting the evolution of international investment law are, including the renewed importance of national security, the rise of multinational enterprises from emerging markets, and the proliferation of investor-state arbitrations. The avenues for change that this volume suggests include institutional responses, the development of a restatement, and the smart use of hard and soft law regulation. The designers of investment law's future will find this book a treasure trove of inspiration and innovation." --Stephan Schill Senior Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg "This timely collection of essays delivers a cohesive, yet multi-faceted, analysis of a dynamic area of public international law. The many distinguished contributors provide the reader with a multi-disciplinary perspective on the rapid development of an international regime for the control of national regulation of foreign investment. The editors are renowned scholars who have managed to strike a balance between both proponents and detractors of the regime as it currently stands, while treating the reader to some insightful opinions on where the regime goes from here. I would recommend this thoughtful contribution to practitioners and academics alike." --Todd Weiler Investment Arbitration Counsel and Co-Founder of Investmentclaims.com "Through a compendium of chapters that comprise the fine publication entitled The Evolving International Investment Regime, the editors, José Alvarez and Karl Sauvant -- noted experts in the field of international policy and law -- bring together a diverse group of established figures in this field who provide varying perspectives, ideas and potential paths forward for resolving international investment disputes...I recommend to anyone who is interested in the basic underpinnings of this rapidly emerging area of law." --Edward G. Kehoe, NYSBA - New York Dispute Resolution Lawyer, Fall 2011, Vol. 4 "Essential for anyone interested in the field of international investment law as it provides a timely, contemporary look at the system and provides alternatives to make the system better." --Borzu Sabahi and Kabir Duggal, The Journal of World Investment & Trade "For any student of the field of international investment law the debates represented in this Report will open up new avenues of research." --Julien Topal, Global Law Books