Categories: International and Comparative Law Business, Corporate, Commercial Law

Instructor(s)

Yackee, Jason

Course Data

Room 5229
W 11:00am-1:00am

Pass/Fail: Yes

Course Description

Over the past twenty years, global flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) have increased at an astounding annual growth rate of over 25 percent. Multinational corporations (MNCs) and their overseas investment activities are an immensely important and often contentious aspect of globalization. This seminar analyzes the developing global legal framework for regulating relations between foreign investors and the states hosting their investments. The course focuses on the international law relevant to the resolution of investment disputes much more so than on the law of “doing deals.” This is a litigation course, not a transactional course. The course also slights the important subject of how international investment disputes are settled between private parties. That latter subject occupies the bulk of most standard courses in international commercial arbitration, which I teach in the fall semester, and will not be covered here.

Over the course of the semester we will examine the sources of international legal rules governing the treatment of FDI and including primarily Bilateral Investment Treaties, or BITs, and Chapter 11 of NAFTA. We will also spend considerable time studying the ways in which investment disputes are settled, paying particular attention to international arbitration before the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

Final grades will be based entirely on a substantial writing project.

The seminar may be taken pass-fail. There are no prerequisites to the course, though familiarity with principles of public international law may be helpful.

There is no casebook assigned, as there are no high-quality casebooks in this field. Instead, you should purchase the coursepack from the law school’s copy shop. The first half of the coursepack will be available for purchase at the beginning of the semester

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