Building International Investment Law: The First 50 Years of ICSID

Abstract

The International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the ICSID Convention. 2 To commemorate this milestone, ICSID has, among other things, published Building International Investment Law: The First 50 Years of ICSID . 3 Professors, arbitrators and practitioners from around the world analyse the history of ICSID and the development of international investment law through some of the leading cases that have marked the practice of investment arbitration, address ongoing challenges and offer suggestions for future improvements. The first part of the book contains six chapters dedicated to the analysis of ‘general principles’ in investment arbitration, in general, and in ICSID arbitration, in particular. Michael Reisman and Judge Mahnoush Arsanjani offer an analysis of the history of Article 42 of the ICSID Convention, which governs the law applicable to a dispute. 4 They take us through the decisions of the first ad hoc committees ( Klöckner v Cameroon and Amco Asia v Indonesia , both brought pursuant to an arbitration clause in a contract) 5 and their interpretations of Article 42 at a time when ICSID consent under bilateral investment treaties (BITs) was not the norm, and they contrast such interpretations with one of the first annulment committee decisions under a BIT, Wena v Egypt . 6 The authors conclude that from the legislative history of Article 42 it is clear that ‘some role [has been] reserved for domestic law’, 7 and they lament that the two contradictory approaches undertaken by the ad hoc committees do not allow any defaulting operation for domestic law but revert to the application of international law.