Böcker i Cambridge International Trade and Economic Law-serien

Attempts at developing a theory of international investment law are complicated by the fact that this field of international law is based on numerous, largely bilateral treaties and is implemented by arbitral panels established on a case-by-case basis. This suggests a fragmented and chaotic state of the law, with different levels of protection depending on the sources and targets of foreign investment flows. This book, however, forwards the thesis that international investment law develops, despite its bilateral form, into a multilateral system of law that backs up the functioning of a global market economy based on converging principles of investment protection. In discussing the function of most-favored-nation clauses, the possibilities of treaty-shopping and the impact of investor-State arbitration with its intensive reliance on precedent and other genuinely multilateral approaches to treaty interpretation, it offers a conceptual framework for understanding the nature and functioning of international investment law as a genuinely multilateral system.

After ten years the Doha Development Round is effectively dead. Although some have suggested that Doha's demise threatens the continued existence of the GATT/WTO system, even with some risks of increasing protectionism, the United States, the European Union, Japan, Brazil, China and India, among others, have too much to lose to make abandoning the WTO a rational option. There are alternatives to a comprehensive package of new or amended multilateral agreements, including existing and future 'plurilateral' trade agreements, new or revised regional trade agreements covering both goods and services, and liberalized national trade laws and regulations in the WTO member nations. This book discusses these alternatives, which although less than ideal, may provide an impetus for continuing trade liberalization both among willing members and in some instances worldwide.

Trade remedies are very widely used in today's global trading environment and are effective in closing national markets to foreign competitors. This book explores one way in which exporters can challenge this: by using the judicial review mechanism of the importing country.

The final defence in WTO dispute settlement is authorised, state-to-state retaliation that governments can implement against trading partners. Despite being critical to dispute settlement, little is known about its operation. This volume brings together legal, economic and political perspectives on the topic from academics and practitioners involved in these actions.

Balancing the non-economic interests of host States and the treaty rights of foreign investors is key for regulators, policy makers and treaty negotiators. This volume examines how to maintain a State's right and duty to take action while respecting its international commitments toward foreign investors and controlling protectionist tendencies.

The Challenge of Safeguards in the WTO provides a comprehensive overview of the safeguard mechanism in the multilateral trading system. It explains at length its historical and conceptual foundations and elaborates on the various requirements for the imposition of safeguards and the conduct of safeguard investigations. The author draws on his practical experience in order to analyse WTO case law as developed by WTO panels and the Appellate Body and to provide practical suggestions for the resolution of various complex issues which have arisen in practice. He also considers the challenges faced by companies involved in this type of case.

This book examines judicial acts infringing the rights of foreign investors that can give rise to international responsibility of the state. It addresses legal issues that will be of interest to academics, researchers, and practitioners working in the area of public international law and, particularly, in international investment law.

In the post-crisis, 'new normal' world, scholars are increasingly exploring world trade and globalisation narratives which are alternatives to the conventional neoliberal, Washington Consensus theories. Sungjoon Cho responds to this contemporary intellectual demand by reconstructing the world trading system from a 'social' perspective.

International law has historically regulated foreign trade and foreign investment differently. Distinct evolutionary pathways have led to variances in treaty form, institutional culture, and dispute settlement. With their inevitable erosion through the late twentieth to early twenty-first centuries, those weak boundaries have become porous and indefensible. Powerful economic, legal and sociological factors are now pushing the two systems together. In this book, Jurgen Kurtz systematically explores the often complex and little-understood dynamics of this convergence phenomenon. Kurtz addresses the growing connections between international trade and investment law, proposing a theoretically grounded and doctrinally tractable framework to understand the deepening relationship between them. The book also offers reform ideas and possibilities, providing treaty negotiators and other government officials with a set of theoretical insights and doctrinal models that can guide actors in building a justifiable and sustainable level of commonality between the two legal systems.