The issue of investor responsibility reveals a stubborn bias within international investment law. That law addresses mistreatment by host states of foreign investors but consistently fails to address investor misconduct in host states. The traditional emphasis on state responsibility in this context has allowed abusive, pollutive, and corrupt investor behavior to thrive. International investment law is the current object of scrutiny, criticism, and reform in large part because many see it as overprotecting investors. However, scholars and reformers have focused on state responsibility, tinkering with the legal and institutional conditions that determine the international wrongfulness of state conduct. Unless and until investor responsibility is integrated into international investment law reform, the overprotection of investors owing to an accountability gap will continue to undermine its legitimacy. This essay posits that the first step to integration is understanding why investor responsibility scrabbles to find purchase in international investment law. I argue that elusive investor responsibility was created by omission, with injurious consequences that highlight the need to alter, rather than accept, the status quo.
International investment law and arbitration is a rapidly evolving field, and can be difficult for students to acquire a firm understanding of, given the considerable number of published awards and legal writings. The first edition of this text, cited by courts in Singapore and Colombia, overcame this challenge by interweaving extracts from these arbitral decisions, treaties and scholarly works with concise, up-to-date and reliable commentary. Now fully updated and with a new chapter on arbitrators, the second edition retains this practical structure along with the carefully curated end-of-chapter questions and readings. The authors consider the new chapter an essential revision to the text, and a discussion which is indispensable to understanding the present calls for reform of investment arbitration. The coverage of the book has also been expanded, with the inclusion of over sixty new awards and judicial decisions, comprising both recent and well-established jurisprudence. This textbook will appeal to graduates studying international investment law and international arbitration, as well as being of interest to practitioners in this area.
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