CAPITAL INVESTMENTS AND THE SOVEREIGN PREROGATIVE: A DEFENSE OF INVESTOR-STATE ARBITRATION AGREEMENTS IN INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE
CAPITAL INVESTMENTS AND THE SOVEREIGN PREROGATIVE: A DEFENSE OF INVESTOR-STATE ARBITRATION AGREEMENTS IN INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE

Summary/Abstract: Since the establishment of a more globalized capital market in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, opportunities for private investment in developing nations have spurred a number of successful partnerships between foreign investors and host states seeking capital improvements. A challenge emerges at international law, however, in adjudicating the interests of foreign investors who have witnessed the expropriation of their investments by host states which either lack longstanding protections for private property rights or, alternatively, the political will to enforce existing investment guarantees. In light of the absence of an effective international legal regime designed to ensure that the claims of foreign investors have the chance to be fairly considered in an impartial setting, this article advocates for the expansion of the investor-state arbitration process as the most suitable means for settling disputes between private investors and the host governments which have allegedly expropriated their investments.

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