Foreign Investor Rights and Investment Relations

Abstract

Abstract Investment treaties and ISDS serve not just to resolve disputes between states and foreign investors. Through interpreting foreign investor rights, they also help structure foreign investment relations. This chapter leaves the norm entrepreneurs of the late 1950s and 1960 aside to develop an analytical framework for examining how the rights of foreign investors can contribute to defining their role in and relations with states and local communities. It examines the type of rights that make foreign investment projects, their purpose, and different ways of looking at the interface between these rights, states’ right to regulate, and local communities. A transnational and socio-legal approach to property and contracts informs the analysis. The remainder of the chapter focuses on the importance of ISDS for foreign investor rights, examining the normative and distributive implications of this dispute resolution mechanism.