The Interpretative Practice of International Investment Arbitral Tribunals

Legal interpretation is crucial to striking the right balance between what a norm is - or should be - and its meaning as applied in a concrete case. Given the complex hybrid nature of investor-State arbitration, the act of interpretation acquires particular significance. This far-reaching work explores how investment arbitral tribunals accomplish their task of interpreting the different rules of law within the international investment framework, and how they address the interpretative problems they face.

In its wide-ranging coverage of the interpretative practice of international investment arbitral tribunals, the author provides the following:

• in-depth analysis of how investment arbitral tribunals interpret multiple sources of law, including treaties, customary international law, general principles, national laws, contracts, and transnational law;

• critical evaluation of the interpretative methods used by tribunals, highlighting their strengths in protecting foreign investments and their limitations in promoting a cohesive investment law regime; and

• exploration of the self-imposed interpretative limitations of arbitral tribunals, encompassing their reliance on de facto precedents, their duty to ensure the enforceability of awards, and their awareness of the risk of annulment for misinterpretation of the law.

Extensive review of relevant arbitral awards, jurisprudence, and case studies illustrates how tribunals navigate legal sources. The author also examines possible reasons for tribunals’ interpretative flexibility and indicates the limitations to their interpretative exercise.

With its insights into how tribunals’ interpretative choices influence the consistency, legitimacy, and predictability of the investment arbitration system, this book will help legal practitioners and scholars to understand the complexities and challenges faced by investment arbitral tribunals, thus enabling an anticipation of the scope and limits of arbitral interpretative reasoning. It offers a major contribution to the ongoing debate on the development of a cohesive and predictable international investment law framework by revealing how interpretation shapes legal outcomes.