How much do U.S. corporations know (and care) about bilateral investmenttreaties? Some hints from new survey evidence

New evidence shows that top U.S. corporations are surprisingly unfamiliar with -- and/or lack confidence in -- bilateral investment treaties that are designed to benefit their investments in other countries. To understand whether or not such treaties "work," it is necessary to find out how and why they do, or do not, form part of firms' investment decision-making

美国企业是否重视双边投资协定？来自最新调查的证据与启示

新的证据表明，美国一些顶级公司对于双边投资条约的目的是造福其在其他国家的投资，表现出令人惊奇的陌生，或者是信心不足。 为了了解这样的条约是否有效，关键是要懂得他们是如何以及为什么构成公司的投资决策的一部分

A Matter of Good Form: The (Downsized) Hague Judgments Convention and Conditions of Formal Validity for the Enforcement of Forum Selection Agreements

Can the Hague Judgments Convention be saved through radical downsizing? It has been more than ten years since the Hague Conference on Private International Law (Hague Conference) first officially began exploring the possibility of drafting a global convention on jurisdiction and the enforcement of foreign judgments in civil and commercial matters. (1) It has been more than four years since the Conference presented its preliminary draft convention, (2) itself modeled largely on the European Community\u27s 1968 Brussels Convention on Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (Brussels I). (3) However, this preliminary draft convention was rejected as unacceptable by the American delegation, (4) and a subsequent interim text (5) indicated that Hague Conference delegates remained far from consensus on a wide range of issues. (6

Pacta Sunt Servanda and State Promises to Foreign Investors Before Bilateral Investment Treaties: Myth and Reality

In their 1959 proposal to build a new international legal order founded upon principles of human dignity, Professors Myres McDougal and Harold Lasswell admonished international legal scholars to continuously reappraise the suitability and necessity of existing international legal institutions, taking due notice of the myths on which current arrangements are based and justified.\u27 The aim of this Article is to take McDougal and Lasswell\u27s admonition seriously in analyzing one of the persistent myths that serves to explain and to justify bilateral investment treaties ( BIT s) that form the backbone of the modern system of international investment law. The author’s aim is simply to establish that developing countries enjoy significant flexibility to exit the BIT system-if they come to the conclusion that BITs are, on net, undesirable-without harming their ability to make binding commitments to investors on a case-by-case basis through investment contracts, supported by international arbitration. In Part I, the author first briefly describes the modern BIT regime. The author then summarize and discuss the most important extant theoretical study of BITs and the source of the myth challenged here. Part II presents the mythic account of BITs. Part III analyzes the extensive jurisprudence of international arbitral tribunals in the pre-BIT era, which the author defines as the period prior to the 1990s. This jurisprudence demonstrates that international tribunals reliably expressed support in the abstract for the principle of pacta sunt servanda, and that they reliably awarded investors meaningful compensation for violations of the principle. Part IV discusses why the permanent sovereignty movement failed to make state promises unenforceable. Part V summarizes the Article\u27s main points and responds to four potential objections. Part VI concludes