Program Description

This program will address one of the hottest topics in international arbitration today: arbitrations brought by private companies against States for violations of international investment treaties. Its focus is the new model of U.S. investment treaty.

For over twenty years, the U.S. Government has protected investments of its nationals abroad through a growing network of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with developing countries. The BITs require States to provide basic legal protections for foreign investments in their countries, and allow an injured investor to use international arbitration rather than local courts to pursue claims of breach of the BIT directly against the State.

Investors have increasingly resorted to BIT arbitration in recent years, with some investors winning hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. At the same time, a series of controversial arbitrations under the NAFTA has drawn public attention to the issue and given the U.S. Government new experience as a litigant. In part as a result of the concerns voiced by the public and its experience, the U.S. Government in 2004 substantially revised its model BIT.

Of interest to both experts and to novices in this rapidly evolving field, this teleconference program will both provide an introduction to investment treaty arbitration and host an intensive policy debate on the merit of recent changes to the U.S. model treaty.

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Posted by rjorr at February 21, 2006 2:20 PM