CPD/CPT Course:
International Arbitration
of Investment Disputes

Julien Chaisse is Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Faculty of Law.  He is an award-winning scholar of international law with a special focus on the regulation and development of economic globalization.  His teaching and research include international trade/investment law, international taxation, law of natural resources, and Internet law. Prior to joining CUHK in 2009, Dr. Chaisse was a senior research fellow at the World Trade Institute (Switzerland).  He also held an appointment as lecturer at elite school Sciences Po Aix (France) and served as a diplomat at the Embassy of France in New Delhi (India).

Dr. Chaisse is frequently invited to lecture at many academic institutions and leading universities around the world, including Columbia University (U.S.), University of Oxford (U.K.), Melbourne University (Australia), Tokyo University (Japan), and Tsinghua University (China).  Dr. Chaisse has published numerous well-regarded and widely-cited books and articles, such as "The Regulation of Global Water Services Market", Cambridge University Press (2017); "International Economic Law and Governance", Oxford University Press (2016); "Shareholder Protection Reloaded", Stanford Journal of International Law (2016); "Navigating the Expanding Universe of International Treaties on Foreign Investment", Journal of International Economic Law (2015); "Maintaining the WTO's Supremacy in the International Trade Order", Journal of International Economic Law (2013); and "Promises and Pitfalls of the European Union Policy on Foreign Investment", Journal of International Economic Law (2012).

In recognition of his outstanding academic performance, Dr. Chaisse received the CUHK Vice-Chancellor's Exemplary Teaching Award in 2015 and the CUHK Research Award in 2012.  Dr. Chaisse has held the appointment of Director of the Centre for Financial Regulation and Economic Development at CUHK Law since 2013, and has established forward-looking legal projects and events at CUHK, including the series of "Asia FDI Forum", which has become the most prominent conference on foreign investment regulation in Asia.

In addition to his professorship, Dr. Chaisse is a well-experienced arbitrator and a leading consultant to international organizations, governments, multinational law firms, and private investors.  He is also member of some of the world's foremost organizations, including the World Economic Forum's International Trade and Investment Council and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in which Dr. Chaisse serves on the Working Group on gTLDs' rights protection mechanisms review and the Accountability and Transparency Review program.

Investment arbitration, although it is arbitration, differs from commercial arbitration in fundamental ways:

• Commercial arbitration is based on an arbitration agreement, whereas investment arbitration may be based either on (a) an investment treaty, either multi- or bilateral (BIT), (b) the host State’s national investment law, which often provides for protection of foreign investors or (c) in certain circumstances, an investment agreement;
• In commercial arbitration, the arbitral tribunal judges the contract between the parties, i.e. its conclusion, performance and termination, whereas in investment arbitration, the arbitral tribunal makes findings on the host State’s behavior towards a foreign investor.

• Consider why arbitration is often viewed as an attractive alternative to litigation in domestic courts
• Identify the drawbacks to litigating in either home or host state courts
• Identify the advantages investor-state disputes settlement holds over state-state dispute settlement
• Identify the various sources for consent to an investment arbitration
• Review the identity of the most frequent defendants in investment cases
• Consider the appropriate source of those rules – national law, international law, non-binding codes of conduct, rules in arbitral institutions
• Consider the importance of designating a place of arbitration, because in a non-ICSID case the law of the place of arbitration will govern the amount of assistance that local courts will give the arbitration and the applicable set-aside rules