2013 INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT AGREEMENTS AND INVESTOR-STATE ARBITRATION

  

DATES: DEC  2 - DEC 13, 2013    
TUITION: $3950    
     

 

 

 

 

Overview

This course teaches lawyers, investors and government officials how to draft, negotiate and interpret international investment treaties, and how to resolve disputes arising from them, including the valuation of damages and enforcement. The use of bilateral investment agreements has exploded in recent years. In 2010, almost 3,000 such treaties were in effect. This course provides students with the basics of foreign investment law and regulation and advanced instruction in how and when to initiate arbitration proceedings against nations that violate investment agreements.

 

Course Outline

 

Basic Standards for the Treatment of Foreign Investment

  • National laws and regulations
  • Minimum standards under customary international law
  • Background on the history of free trade and other agreements relating to investment
  • Substance of common investor protection clauses, including national treatment, MFN, fair and equitable treatment, transfer of funds and expropriation and nationalization

 

Investor-State Dispute Settlement

  • Arbitration under various treaties, including ICSID, NAFTA, CAFTA, ECT and UNCITRAL
  • Selection of forum and the arbitrators
  • Alternative forms of dispute resolution
  • Role of the arbitral tribunal and conduct of proceedings
  • Managing the arbitration
  • Sources and choice of applicable law
  • State defenses to investor claims
  • Methods of calculating damages
  • Recognition, enforcement and challenges to an arbitral award

 

Course Advisors

Profesor Borzu Sabahi is a Counsel at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP in Washington, D.C., where he practices international investment law and arbitration. He is also an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center where he co-teaches a seminar on investor-state dispute resolution. He regularly speaks at conferences and has written extensively about various aspects of international investment law, including a comprehensive casebook titled Investor State Arbitration (co-author, Oxford 2008).

Professor Ian A. Laird is a Special Legal Consultant in the International Dispute Resolution Group of Crowell & Moring LLP in its Washington, D.C. office. He is also licensed to practice as a barrister & solicitor in Ontario, Canada. His practice is focused in the field of international investment law and arbitration. Ian has spoken extensively and published numerous articles on international investment arbitration, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of InvestmentClaims.com, the online investment arbitration award service published by Oxford University Press. Professor Jose Antonio Rivas is a foreign attorney at Arnold and Porter in Washington DC, focusing his practice on international investment arbitration. He is former Foreign Investment Director of the Ministry of Trade of Colombia, where he updated the Colombian International Investment Agreement (IIA) Model and he successfully concluded over twelve IIA negotiations. Professor Rivas is former Counsel of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). He received his Doctorate in Law in Juridical Science –SJD– with Distinction from Georgetown University Law Center, where he also serves as adjunct professor.