Introduction: International Investment Law’s Narrative and Shareholders’ Claims for Reflective Loss

Summary

International investment law is a small part of the international economic law normative universe and whose distinctive characteristics form its constitutive legitimacy. Robert M. Cover once wrote in his famous “Nomos and Narrative” that “[n]o set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning.” Norms cannot be understood if taken out of their context, their narrative. International investment law norms are a good example: international investment law norms are created in a specific context characterized by highly particularized features that are, arguably, found nowhere else. Taking an investment norm outside of its context would strip away its constitutive legitimacy and render it inapplicable and obsolete in another context and another narrative. In other words, for one to fully grasp the meaning of an international investment norm or practice, one has to understand the context in which it is generated and applied.