CPD/CPT Course:
International Arbitration
and Foreign Investment:
Principles and Practice

Dr. Julien Chaisse currently serves as professor at the City University of Hong Kong (CityU), School of Law.  He is an award-winning and world-renowned expert on international economic law (trade, investment, and tax), cyberlaw, and international dispute resolution.  His work has garnered wide academic recognition and has been cited by international courts/tribunals as well as the U.S. Courts.  He is the awardee of the Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship (2021) and the recipient of the Smit-Lowenfeld Prize from the International Arbitration Club of New York (2020).  He also sits on the editorial boards of several high impact academic journals, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Asia Pacific Law Review.

Dr. Chaisse is an accomplished senior arbitrator.  Numbers of his adjudications have been reported by local and international press.  He is frequently called upon as an expert witness in international trade/investment litigation and arbitration, to advise international organizations, governments, law firms, and private investors on private/public international law issues (e.g., concessions contracts, special economic zones, investment structuring, state and international organization immunities, and WTO accession), and he has assisted over twenty jurisdictions in drafting trade/investment treaties and legislation.

Dr. Chaisse is currently President and Chair of the Asia Pacific FDI Network (APFN), which is the most important organization in the region that focuses on researching foreign direct investment and facilitating cooperation among over 100 scholars and 50 institutions.  He has extensive experience working as a corporate board member, and serving on the board of directors/advisory board for a number of international organizations, including the World Free Zone Convention (WFZC), the Academy of International Dispute Resolution & Professional Negotiation (AIDRN), the National Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), and the Asian Academy of International Law (AAIL).  In addition, Dr. Chaisse is an active member of the World Economic Forum (“Tax and Globalization Working Group” and “Data Policy Platform”), a member of the Hong Kong’s Government Board of Review (Inland Revenue Ordinance), an advisor and partner to the United Nations ARTNET on FDI, and a member of the Academic Forum on Investor-state Dispute Settlement.  He also serves as Director of the Dot Trademark Policy Committee (DTPC), a co-founder of the Internet Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI), and is a member of the ICANN’s Working Group, which produced the Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs, among other highly-regarded white papers.

Prior to joining CityU Law School, Dr. Chaisse taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Law (2009-2019) where he served as Director of one the Faculty’s research centres as well as Director of PhD & MPhil Program.  Before moving to Hong Kong, he worked as deputy head of the working group on the rules and regulations for multilateral trade and investment agreements at the World Trade Institute in Bern, Switzerland (2006-2009), as a lecturer at Elite School Sciences Po Aix in France (2004-2006), and as a diplomat for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France at the French Embassy in New Delhi, India (2001-2004).

Investment arbitration is a procedure to resolve disputes between foreign investors and host States (also called Investor-State Dispute Settlement or ISDS).  The possibility for a foreign investor to sue a host State is a guarantee for the foreign investor that, in the case of a dispute, it will have access to independent and qualified arbitrators who will solve the dispute and render an enforceable award.  This allows the foreign investor to bypass national jurisdictions that might be perceived to be biased or to lack independence, and to resolve the dispute in accordance to different protections afforded under international treaties.  For a foreign investor to be able to initiate an investment arbitration, a host State must have given consent to this.

Consent to investment arbitration is most commonly given by host States in International Investment Agreements (IIA’s), including Bilateral Investment Treaties (BIT’s) as well as Free Trade Agreements (FTA’s) and multilateral agreements, e.g., The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT).  Less frequently, consent to investment arbitration may be found in investment agreements concluded directly between a State and a foreign investor, or it may be contained in a domestic law of the host State, such as a mining or investment law.  The United Nations’ UNCTAD maintains a list of the vast majority of instruments providing for a host State’s consent to investment arbitration, which should be consulted at the outset of any potential dispute to see whether investment arbitration may be envisaged.

This course reviews the main conditions, steps and actors in the practice of investment arbitration.

• Consider why arbitration is often viewed as an attractive alternative to litigation in domestic courts
• Identify the drawbacks to litigating in either home or host state courts
• Identify the advantages investor-state disputes settlement holds over state-state dispute settlement
• Identify the various sources for consent to an investment arbitration
• Review the identity of the most frequent defendants in investment cases
• Learn about "fork-in-the-road" clauses
• Consider the potential overlap between domestic causes of action and international investment law claims
• Examine the waiver of the exhaustion-of-local-remedies rule
• Consider the relationship between choice-of-forum clauses in contracts and the referral to arbitration under an investment treaty
• Consider the advantages of international arbitration vs. national courts