Originally from World Arbitration And Mediation Review (WAMR)

I. INTRODUCTION

A growing movement of academics is advocating to treat the protections bestowed upon investors by international investment agreements as “public law,” or, to translate for the US audience, administrative law. The advocates of investment protection as administrative law range broadly from vocal critics seeking to undo the investment protection as we know it, taking aim in particular at the perceived excesses and corruption of investorstate arbitration,1 to reformists wishing to change the relationship between host states and investment tribunals from within the current system,2 to defenders of the current system wishing to place investment protection on a platform that would appear more palatable to its critics.3 The claims of excess and corruption of investor-state arbitration as such have been decisively refuted elsewhere,4 leaving the question: what of the moderate public law advocates?