State Responsibility for Breaches of Investment Contracts

This book critically analyses the origins, the creation, and the evolution of an international law on investment contract protection.

Jean Ho (Author)

9781108402439, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 February 2020

378 pages
23 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.55 kg

'This work is a superlative historical and systematic analysis of legal materials on investment contracts to the present day. As unilateral reforms, both substantive and procedural, are applied to treaty-based investments, compelling foreign investors increasingly to seek contractual protections with a host State, it is likely to become an essential guide for all participants in this specialist field of investor-state investment disputes.' V.V. Veeder, QC, Essex Court Chambers, and Visiting Professor on Investment Arbitration, Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London

There is a wealth of material that shapes the law of State responsibility for breaches of investment contracts. First impressions of an unsettled or uncertain law have thus far gone unchallenged. But unchallenged first impressions point to the need for a detailed study that investigates and analyses the sources, the content, the characteristics, and the evolution of this law. The argument at the heart of this monograph is that the law of state responsibility for breaches of investment contracts has carved a unique and distinct trajectory from the traditional route for the creation of international law, developing principally from arbitral awards, and mimicking, to a considerable extent, the general international law on the protection of aliens and alien property. This book unveils the remarkable journey of the law of state responsibility for breaches of investment contracts, from its origins, to its formation, to its arrival at the cusp of maturity.

1. Power and principle in the origins of contractual protection
2. Arbitral awards and the generation of international law
3. State responsibility and the core standard of treatment
4. State responsibility and expropriation
5. State responsibility and internationalisation
6. The emerging international law on investment contract protection
7. The future of international investment contract claims.

Subject Areas: Contract law [LNCJ], International organisations & institutions [LBBU], Public international law [LBB], International trade [KCLT], International economics [KCL], International relations [JPS]