1,721,031 research outputs found
A Paradigm Shift?:Arbitration and Court-Like Mechanisms in Investors' Disputes
No full textRecently, several court-like mechanisms have been considered as a substitute for investor-state arbitration. Suggestions for creating such mechanisms have been around for a long time, but new trade agreements may make court-like mechanisms for investors’ disputes a reality. This paper starts by asking whether the shift from arbitration to court-like mechanism is likely to happen and how deep is the change to dispute resolution going to be. The advantages and disadvantages of replacing ad-hoc arbitrators with court-like mechanisms are examined. Courts are more centralized than arbitrators, which gives them the ability to act in a coherent way and consider long-term consequences. However, centralization may imply a greater risk of capture by special interests and could lead to more radical legal developments than the stable system of diverse arbitration. Furthermore, compromise solutions that create numerous competing court-like mechanisms instead of a universal court may escalate the fragmentation of international law
Law as a Science
No full textThe purpose of this book is to investigate what methods of interpretation and understanding of the law are useful for legal scholarship. The main idea is that legal scholarship needs to regularly make assumptions about the content of the law and about human behavior to better understand legal doctrine. For example, law and economics scholars often assume that people are rational or that the law aspires to efficiency. These assumptions may be untrue, but they can lead to hypotheses about the content of the law that are susceptible to empirical investigation against relevant legal sources. In contrast, conceptual thinking about the essence of the law does not make claims that can be falsified by observing legal sources. The book offers a methodology for examining the state of the law on a specific topic that aspires to be rigorous. It recommends first establishing what are the conflicting paradigms that explain the relevant legal field. These paradigms can serve as assumptions and scholars need to build a hypothesis that complies with all the relevant assumptions. The hypothesis can then be checked against legal sources. If there are relevant judgments on a similar topic, scholars can use reasoning by analogy to test the hypothesis against them, but only if the analogy is grounded in policy reasons. Analogies cannot be used only because legal solutions look conceptually similar. If a hypothesis about the law is confirmed by legal sources, it can be adopted as the best interpretation of the law on a particular point. To demonstrate that every assumption about the law can be contested, the book reviews three basic legal principles: proportionality, consistency, and legal truth. It suggests that such principles are useful assumptions that can lead to good predictions about the content of the law most of the time, but in certain situations, they should be discarded and replaced by other assumptions
Elites, power struggles, and the law ::how courts support diffuse interests /
No full text"This book challenges Mancur Olson's famous observation that concentrated interests inevitably dominate diffuse ones in democracies by presenting an alternative view that strong, independent courts can effectively protect the rights of diffuse interests against powerful, concentrated groups. Drawing on diverse examples from national and international courts, this book demonstrates how judicial institutions can rebalance democratic power dynamics. The analysis contributes to two fundamental debates in law and social sciences: the competition between diffuse and concentrated interests in democratic systems, and the evolving societal role of courts at both national and international levels. Dothan argues that courts support diffuse interests not due to judges' ideologies, but through structural incentives that make such support strategically beneficial. Even when courts cannot directly help diffuse interests or when their judgments face compliance issues, they still strengthen these groups by providing information and motivation for political engagement. Elites, Power Struggles, and the Law be of interest to scholars and students of socio-legal studies, international law, and comparative law, as well as others with relevant interests in sociology and political science"-- Provided by publisher
Permanent Investment Courts:The European Experiment
No full textThis special issue focuses on the opportunities and challenges connected with investment courts. The creation of permanent investment courts was first proposed several decades ago, but it has only recently become likely that these proposals will be implemented. In particular, the European Commission has pushed for a court-like mechanism to resolve investment disputes in various recent trade and investment negotiations. Such a framework was included in some free trade agreements (FTAs) and investment protection agreements (IPAs) the European Union (EU) signed or negotiated with Vietnam, Singapore, Mexico and Canada. While it was shelved long before the publication of this Special Issue, the European Commission had also formally proposed a court system during the negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement with the United States. The issue of a Multilateral Investment Court (MIC) has also been prevalent at the Working Group III proceedings of the UNCITRAL on investor-State dispute settlement reform, attracting scholarly and public attention.Will these developments lead to the creation of permanent investment courts? How will such courts change the future of international investment law? Will they bring about a real institutional change in adjudicatory mechanisms? Will they introduce a 'hybrid' system, which borrows important characteristics from both arbitration and institutional methods of international adjudication? How will the enforcement mechanisms work, and under which rules of ethics will its adjudicators function and exercise their duties? This special issue brings together leading scholars sharing a common interest in investment courts to address these questions
Reputation and Judicial Tactics : A Theory of National and International Courts /
No full textTitle from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 25 Nov 2014)
Three Paradigms of International Judicial Review
No full textThe forms of intervention of international courts in domestic affairs could be divided to three broad paradigms: (1) the Westphalian Paradigm (2) the Hierarchical Paradigm (3) the Network Paradigm. According to the Westphalian Paradigm, the role of international courts is to coordinate the interactions of sovereign states. According to the Hierarchical Paradigm, international courts initiate social change by issuing judgments that require states to amend their practices. Naturally, under this paradigm, courts are concerned about their ability to secure compliance with their judgments, but also about the legitimacy of their decisions and their ability to make good policy stipulations. According to the Network Paradigm, international courts are embedded within a vast web of actors with different interests. This chapter will survey the three different paradigms of international judicial review and demonstrate the unique considerations international courts need to take into account under every paradigm
Judicial Deference Allows European Consensus to Emerge
Get PDFThe European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) searches for human rights policies that are adopted by the majority of the countries in Europe. Using a doctrine known as “emerging consensus,” the court then imposes these policies as an international legal obligation on all the countries under its jurisdiction. But the ECHR sometimes defers to countries, even if their policies fall short of the standard accepted by most of the countries in Europe. This deference is accomplished by using the so-called “margin of appreciation” doctrine. Naturally, emerging consensus and margin of appreciation are often conceived as competing doctrines: the more there is of one, the less there is of another. This article suggests a novel rationale for the emerging consensus doctrine: the doctrine can allow the ECHR to make good policies by drawing on the independent decision-making of many similar countries. In light of that, the article demonstrates that a correct application of the margin of appreciation doctrine actually helps emerging consensus reach optimal results by giving countries an incentive to make their policies independently
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