Originally from Investment Treaty Arbitration and International Law - Volume 8

Authors: Ms. Margarita Sánchez

Mr. Timothy Foden

Moderator: Mr. Michael Nolan

Commentators: Ms. Tina Cicchetti

Ms. Eloïse Obadia

Mr. Paolo Di Rosa

Mr. Charles Roh

Mr. Jonathan Kallmer

PANEL TWO

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

DR. WEILER: Thank you again for a second session. I don’t want to hold this up because we’re trying to keep a tight time with lunch, so I will just introduce Mr. Michael Nolan and have him come up and get started with our next panel on full protection and security.

MR. NOLAN: I won’t even come up because I think what’s important is that we hear from our authors and our panelists. I will say only that the topic is back to fundamentals, the more general topic.

This panel gets at an aspect of that question, back to fundamentals, by focusing on investment, which is obviously what the whole enterprise is fundamentally about, the protection of investment. The way in which the organizers have suggested we do that is through the lens of a particular protection standard of full protection and security. That might seem a bit particular, but it actually is a pretty effective lens for doing that; in that full protection and security is a standard that, as historically formulated, is often said to have certain restrictive aspects, restrictive in terms of what sorts of interests are protected. Historically it said, and I keep saying “it said” because our chief organizer has taken a somewhat broader view of the historical underpinnings of the standard than is generally set of the standard, but it is historically thought of as a standard that deals fundamentally with physical security and, therefore, perhaps is not encompassing more intangible forms of investment, and it’s also a standard that is sometimes said as a historical matter to focus on actions of third parties as opposed to actions of the State, although there’s obviously been great development over many years with respect to that aspect of the standard. I say that simply to organize your thinking about this panel because we're going to be looking at "investment" from the perspective of this particular standard.