Chapter 3

Protecting “Property” Rights In Investment Treaty Arbitration —A Compound Definitional Dilemma

PANEL 1

MR. LAIRD: Welcome to the Ninth Annual Juris Conference on Investment Treaty Arbitration. This year’s theme is natural resources, and we’ve picked four interesting panels that are directed at some very cutting-edge issues in this field. My name is Ian Laird, I am a partner at Crowell & Moring LLP, based here in Washington, D.C.

We have an excellent conference planned for you today, but first I want to introduce the co-chairs of the conference to you. We have Dr. Todd Weiler, who is an arbitrator and consultant and counsel and has been working in this field for over seventeen years. I know because I’ve often worked with him during that period. Todd received his doctorate from the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor. Ever the gluten for punishment, he has also recently commenced studies towards a second doctorate, this time a PhD in History from the University of Western Ontario. As one might expect with any eternal student, he has more publications to his credit than I’d care to count.

Todd is the founder of this conference and the creator of the concept, which you’ve seen in the notes, and for those of you who haven’t been at this conference before, you’ll know it’s a little different than the usual model, in that it provides younger and up-and-coming practitioners and scholars with the opportunity to briefly present a paper, and then join with the rest of us, and a small group of selected discussants, in a roundtable discussion of two of these authors’ apposed contributions.

Over the last nine years, we’ve had over sixty young practitioners, young academics, and up-and-coming people in our field write a series of papers for each panel. They are instructed to write papers with contrasting viewpoints so that we can push and pull at the edges of these issues by engaging in a more vigorous debate. It should therefore be recalled that the positions taken in these papers may not reflect the personally-held views of these individuals, but it will reflect their best work. It’s all about generating debate, and we accordingly also encourage contributions from the audience.