Foreword

Summary

Investment disputes often engage matters of the public interest. One of the most significant challenges facing international investment law today is the need to balance the interests of investors in the protection of their investment with the regulatory interests of host States. At times, ad hoc tribunals deciding investment treaty claims have produced decisions with seemingly little regard for the latter interests. This contributes to a concern on the part of States that international investment law is becoming one-sided, favouring claimant investors over host States.

The UNCITRAL Rules on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor- State Arbitration underline the public interest function of those tribunals and should help to render these disputes more visible. The UNCITRAL Rules, analysed in this book, could facilitate third parties’ access to proceedings and thereby increase the transparency of these disputes in the public interest.

The editors, Dimitrij Euler, Maxi Scherer and Markus Gehring, all have strong research and professional links to investment law. Dimitrij Euler, a PhD researcher at the University of Basel and a former Visiting Scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law in Cambridge, focuses his research on transparency and arbitration. Dr Maxi Scherer, a Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London (School of International Arbitration) and Special Counsel at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, is a distinguished scholar and has acted as arbitrator in investment arbitration. Dr Markus W. Gehring, MA (Cantab), LLM (Yale), Dr jur (Hamburg), is Deputy Director of the Centre for European Legal Studies (CELS) at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge and a Fellow at Hughes Hall and at the Lauterpacht Centre. He has worked extensively on sustainable development in investment and trade law.

Their edited commentary reflects the search for increased transparency in investment law and provides a useful insight into the history and interpretation of the UNCITRAL Rules. They have gathered together contributions from authors with diverse backgrounds in academia, private and public legal practice and international organisations. These different perspectives add to our understanding of this new set of international standards. Their analysis of the history and of relevant international cases and awards provides a useful resource for academics and practitioners in the field of investment law. Transparency in investment arbitration has to seek viable compromises between the interests of the parties and the interest of the public. This volume contributes usefully to this discussion.