Originally from Investment Treaty Arbitration and International Law Volume 17

Preview Page

DR. TODD J. WEILER: Welcome everybody to the 17th annual Juris Conference. It’s an interesting time now that we live in, I was reading an article by Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic, which basically posits that international norms may not matter anymore. I think it’s obviously meant to be provocative, but I hope she’s wrong. On the other hand, both from the perspective of the law of war and humanitarian law, but also from the perspective of international economic law, there are great challenges to the rule of international law right now. This conference and its topics are demonstrations of the phenomenon, to a certain extent. Threats to the international order also emanate from both the left and the right, with statism seemingly settling in as the new global zeitgeist. Either way, the idea of classical liberal economic freedom seems to be on the backfoot, if not, on both back feet. International investment law is primarily rooted in the increasingly scarce values of economic freedom. So, it’ll be interesting to hear all four panels today. 
Our first panel is led by Ian Laird, who is probably known to everyone who is watching both in person and online. Ian has also very kindly been hosting us here at Crowell & Moring for the past two years, in addition to having hosted the speakers’ dinner. He’s had a lot of practice in this regard, as it was also Ian whose firm then hosted our very first conference dinner, 17 years ago. We are eternally grateful to Ian for all he has done for the conference, including the role he played as co-chair for the first dozen years. 

MR. IAN LAIRD: Well, thank you, Todd, for that very kind introduction. And it’s a real pleasure to be here. Again, it’s hard to believe that this is the 17th year of the Juris International Investment Arbitration Conference. We’ve had some fantastic authors and panelists and topics over the many years. And one of the greatest and, I think, enduring elements of this conference, is the format that we’ve pretty faithfully followed for that entire 17 years. And the real objective of this conference, not only to provide a great presentation of current issues, is that for each of the panels, and we have four panels today, but each of the panels will also have two authors, and the authors are assigned a topic. And they are assigned to be in contrary positions. And they will say today, and I think you should take it as read that, really, these are not their personal views. But they’ve taken on the task, as good lawyers who you know, frequently have a client with a position to advocate it to their fullest. And we always believed, and this was really towards innovation, that providing that kind of debate, the sort of contrary positions, the adversarial provisions, helps bring out the issues and helps highlight where the debate is situated and gives you, you know, a real sense of what’s going on.