Book Reviews - ARIA - Vol. 20, No. 2, 2009

Expatiating upon “54 rules covering the juridical foundations of investment treaty arbitration, the jurisdiction of the tribunal, the admissibility of claims and the laws applicable to different aspects of investment disputes” with reference to a “diverse range of legal texts including investment treaty awards, the decisions of other international courts and tribunals, model investment treaties, municipal laws and decisions of municipal courts and tribunals, and the writings of leading publicists,” this volume is a “first attempt at codifying a specialist domain of international law that is at a nascent stage of development.”

The Multilateralization of International Investment Law, by Stephan W. Schill. Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 378.
by Joshua D. Leaver

In his book, The Multilateralization of International Investment Law, Stephan W. Schill addresses the dynamics of arbitral decisional law and the operation of international investment treaties. According to Schill, international investment law is traditionally thought of as fragmented, bilateral, and implemented by arbitral tribunals which establish, on an ad hoc basis, increasingly inconsistent decisional law. He rejects this traditional thinking by arguing that, despite the existence of innumerable bilateral investment relationships, international investment law is emerging as a multilateral system.