Domestic Investment Law

Abstract

Besides international investment treaties, ‘domestic investment laws’ play an important role for the protection of foreign investments. In fact, every foreign investment is primarily governed by the domestic laws of the host country concerned, subject to their compatibility with relevant international (treaty) obligations. This not only applies in the domestic context of application of national laws if the host State’s domestic legal order acknowledges the supremacy of international (treaty) law over conflicting national rules. Arbitral tribunals constituted under international investment treaties also consider rules of domestic law. As pointed out in the investment treaty-based investor-State arbitration of Paushok v. Mongolia, the law governing the investor-State dispute “is public international law and the law of Mongolia as far as it is relevant.”