Whether considered ‘wholly distinct, autonomous, or even antagonistic legal domains’, or seen as two sets of legal regimes belonging to the same legal system with ‘meaningful relationships between them’, the international law of investments and the law of human rights appear to have, in the practice of arbitration, an uneasy, tense, strained relationship.
For some commentators, public international law (of which human rights is a part) and international investment law would have ‘structural differences’, which have ‘led investment tribunals to grant precedence to the contractual rules that have been agreed upon by host states and investors’. For others, human rights are ‘a marginal issue in investment law’, ‘peripheral at best’, to fulfil ‘no more than an ancillary role in the settlement of investorstate disputes’.
This article looks into the fundamental relationship between human rights and investment law in the wake of the recent Philip Morris v. Uruguay and Urbaser v. Argentina cases. In doing so it addresses questions such as: Are human rights and investment arbitration animals of a different nature? Are human rights arbitrable within an investment claim?
Journal of International Arbitration