The WTO and International Investment Law Converging Systems

International law has historically regulated foreign trade and foreign investment differently. Distinct evolutionary pathways have led to variances in treaty form, institutional culture, and dispute settlement. With their inevitable erosion through the late twentieth to early twenty-first centuries, those weak boundaries have become porous and indefensible. Powerful economic, legal and sociological factors are now pushing the two systems together. In this book, Jürgen Kurtz systematically explores the often complex and little-understood dynamics of this convergence phenomenon. Kurtz addresses the growing connections between international trade and investment law, proposing a theoretically grounded and doctrinally tractable framework to understand the deepening relationship between them. The book also offers reform ideas and possibilities, providing treaty negotiators and other government officials with a set of theoretical insights and doctrinal models that can guide actors in building a justifiable and sustainable level of commonality between the two legal systems.

1. Introduction; 2. History; 3. National treatment; 4. Science as a common proxy for rational regulation; 5. Common exceptions and derogations; 6. Dispute settlement; 7. Conclusion.

Jürgen Kurtz is a Professor and Director of International Economic Law Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He also teaches as Visiting Professor of Law in the LLM in a European and Global Context at Universidade Catolica in Portugal, the LLM in International Economic Law and Policy at the University of Barcelona, and also teaches at the Singapore International Arbitration Academy and the Pearl River Academy of International Trade and Investment Law in Macau and Shenzhen, China. He is currently a director of the Society of International Economic Law and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of World Investment and Trade.