Emergency Economic Intervention and the Rights of Foreign Investors: US-Argentina Practice

Abstract

The article highlights salient issues relating to contemporary investment arbitration, a now distinct category of international economic law. Recent arbitral awards that bear on US foreign investment in Argentina give international lawyers a chance to tackle important economic subject matters underlying international law. The problem of undertaking emergency economic measures vis-à-vis US companies was raised by several ICSID tribunals. Inevitably, these tribunals had to look at general international law, namely the existence and limits of necessity – invoked by Argentina in time of public emergency – to ascertain a correct interpretation of the 1991 US-Argentina bilateral investment treaty.