Campbell McLachlan

INVESTMENT TREATIES AND GENERAL INTERNATIONAL LAW

The huge rise in the settlement of investment disputes by treaty has provoked an underlying question of great practical and theoretical importance: the relationship between the substantive standards protected in such treaties and general international law. This paper argues that the relationship is symbiotic: custom informing the content of the treay right; and State practice under investment treaties contributing to the development of general international law. It is the structured process of treaty interpretation which determines when and how reference to general international law may be made. Practice in this field supports a broader modern phenomenon, in which ‘general principles of law common to civilized nations’ may be informed not only by common principles of domestic law, but also by general principles of international law itself.

Foreign Relations Law

Part I. Sources: 1. Function 2. Development 3. Interaction between international and national law Part II. The Foreign Relations Power: 4. Executive 5. Legislature 6. Judiciary Part III. Foreign Relations and the Individual: 7. Civil claims against the State 8. Human rights claims 9. Diplomatic protection Part IV. The Foreign State: 10. Personality and representation 11. The claimant State 12. The defendant State.

The Burgh House Principles on the Independence of the International Judiciary

Considering the following principles of international law to be of general application: to ensure the independence of the judiciary, judges must enjoy independence from the parties to cases before them, their own states of nationality or residence, the host countries in which they serve, and the international organisations under the auspices of which the court or tribunal is established; judges must be free from undue influence from any source; judges shall decide cases impartially, on the basis of the facts of the case and the applicable law; judges shall avoid any conflict of interest, as well as being placed in a situation which might reasonably be perceived as giving rise to any conflict of interests; judges shall refrain from impropriety in their judicial and related activities;

The Continuing Controversy over Provisional Measures in International Disputes

I. Of Practice and Principle The dramatic events in the recent case of Motorola Credit Corporation v. Uzan et al 1 demonstrate the global potency of provisional measures in modern international litigation. Following a multi-billion dollar default on its loans to a Turkish mobile telephone operator, Motorola brought a complaint of fraud against its Turkish partner’s owners to the Southern District of New York. It then pursued an application for a freezing injunction in support of the New York proceedings in England. Its coup de grâce was to seek enforcement of that order in Switzerland, a strategy which has now received the blessing of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. The experience of this case could be multiplied many times from the law reports in both public and private international litigation. Very often the availability of provisional measures is of huge practical importance to the parties, and may be decisive of the outcome of the case. This is not only true of the large multi-jurisdictional commercial and fraud cases typified by the Motorola litigation. In international tribunals, too, the interim measures jurisdiction may overshadow the settlement of disputes on the merits, as the initial experience of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea demonstrates. It is doubtless true, as Jiménez de Aréchaga held in the Aegean Sea Continental Shelf case in the International Court of Justice, that the interim protection of rights is a general principle of law recognized by civilised nations:2