Alternative Visions of the International Law on Foreign Investment: Essays in Honour of Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah

Description

This book is about the forces that are reshaping the international law on foreign investment today. It begins by explaining the liberal origins of contemporary investment treaties before addressing a current backlash against these treaties and the device of investment arbitration. The book describes a long-standing legal-intellectual resistance to a neo-liberal global economic agenda, and how tribunals have interpreted various treaty standards instead. It introduces our reader to the changes now taking place in the design of a range of familiar treaty clauses, and it describes how some of these changes are now driven not only by developing and emerging economies but also by the capital-exporting nations. Finally, it explores the life, career and writings of Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah, a scholar whose work has been dedicated to the realisation of many of these changes, and his views about the hold global capital has over legal practice.

C. L. Lim is Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong, Visiting Professor at King's College London and, in 2015, Lionel A. Sheridan Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore. He practices as a barrister from Keating Chambers, London and has advised sovereign nations and private clients in public and private international law matters and disputes. His latest publications include International Economic Law after the Global Crisis: A Tale of Fragmented Disciplines (Cambridge, 2015), The Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Quest for a Twenty-First-Century Agreement (Cambridge, 2012) and articles in the McGill Law Journal, the Stanford Journal of Law, Business and Finance, and the Law Quarterly Review. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford, Harvard Law School, Massachusetts and the University of Nottingham.