International Investment Arbitration launched in London
Campbell McLachlan QC, Professor of Law at Victoria University of Wellington, was in London recently for the launch of the second edition of his book, International Investment Arbitration: Substantive Principles.
Co-authored with Laurence Shore and Matthew Weiniger, and published by Oxford University Press, the book provides a detailed analytical survey of the substantive principles of international law applied by investment arbitration tribunals. Its first edition, published in 2007, quickly became a widely-referenced authority on the subject.
In recent decades, widespread liberalisation of economic policy has led to a worldwide surge in international investment. This has prompted the signature of over three thousand Bilateral Investment Treaties and free trade ageements – agreements that establish the terms and conditions for private investment by nationals and companies of one state in another state.
Arbitration of overseas investment disputes is one of the fastest-growing areas of international dispute resolution. “When we published the first edition in 2007, ours was the first modern book on the subject, analysing the actual application of the principles by arbitral tribunals. In the intervening decade, there have not only been hundreds of new decisions but also a wealth of new scholarship. Investment arbitration has also become highly controversial – and not just within the arbitral and scholarly community. It is also a topic of intense public scrutiny and debate. It has become in many ways a microcosm of larger debates about globalisation and the proper balance between national and the international decision-making. The issues in investment arbitration wear contemporary garb, yet they are actually as old as international law itself. In substantially rewriting the book for the second edition, we have sought to bring to bear a decade of our own deeper researches and experience in the field. We continue to believe that it is vitally important for all those involved in investment arbitration or interested in it to have access to a treatise that analyses the key legal principles dispassionately in a clear, balanced and coherent framework.”,” says Professor McLachlan. Professor Loukas Mistelis (Queen Mary, London) has commented that the second edition establishes the book as “the most authoritative” in the field.
The book’s publication in the Americas will be marked by a further launch in New York on 19 June 2017.