Course

International Investment Law - LAWS8079

Faculty: Faculty of Law

School: Faculty of Law

Course Outline: See below

Campus: Sydney

Career: Postgraduate

Units of Credit: 6

EFTSL: 0.12500 (more info)

Indicative Contact Hours per Week: 2

Enrolment Requirements:

Academic Program must be either 9200, 9210, 5740, 9231 or 5231

Excluded: JURD7479

CSS Contribution Charge: 3 (more info)

Tuition Fee: See Tuition Fee Schedule

Further Information: See Class Timetable

View course information for previous years.

Description

This course aims to provide an overview on central topics of international investment law. It will trace the traditional approach of regulating foreign direct investments in customary international law and then focus on the present state of investor protection through a dense web of more than 2000 bilateral investment protection treaties as well as some multilateral agreements containing investment provisions such as NAFTA, the Energy Charter Treaty and others.

The standards of treatment guaranteed to foreign investors in these treaties as well as under customary international law will be analysed. Equally, the protection against expropriation will merit special attention. The growing case-law of international arbitration tribunals will serve as a background to this analysis.

This course will not only address the issue of substantive standards. It will equally deal with the question of enforcing such standards through various forms of dispute settlement, ranging from domestic litigation, national as well as international insurance schemes to international investment arbitration before ICSID, NAFTA, UNCITRAL or other dispute settlement institutions.


LLM Specialisations

Recommended Prior Knowledge

None

Course Objectives

The specific aims of the course are:
  • To assist students to develop an understanding of the issues involved in the regulation of trans-border investment
  • To give them an advanced knowledge of international investment law and its relationship to national legal systems
  • To develop an awareness of different methods of international investment law as compared to national law in such matters as textual interpretation and working with judicial decisions
  • To assist students to recognise international investment law problems in their subsequent careers and to point them in the direction of ways of resolving them

Main Topics

  • The sources of international investment law
  • Investment agreements
  • Expropriation
  • Standards of treatment
  • Responsibility of the host state and protection by the investor's home state
  • Dispute settlement
  • ICSID (The Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes)

Assessment

Research Essay (5000 words) 90%
Class Participation 10%
Library

Study Levels

UNSW Quick Links