International Economic Law and Business

This seminar will concisely examine three global areas of public regulation over cross-border transactions and firm operations – world trade law, international foreign investment law, and international financial law – which increasingly comprise the new areas of domestic and transnational legal practice. 

Students will gain functional knowledge of: 1) the architecture of the trade law regime and its centralized dispute settlement mechanism at the World Trade Organization; 2) the international investment law regime and its diffuse investor-State dispute settlement mechanisms, such as investor-State arbitration at the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), international adjudication at the International Court of Justice, as well as dispute resolution design mechanisms based on investment treaties and foreign investment contracts; and 3) the international financial and monetary governance system, including the basic jurisdictional competences of the global lending institutions (e.g. the International Monetary Fund, the Paris Club, the London Club, the World Bank, regional development banks). Issues of State development, sovereignty over economic regulation and natural resources, and the challenging implementation of economic, social and cultural rights in global economic transactions will also be explored within each of the three specialized treaty regimes. Students will also be introduced to fundamental principles and processes of international dispute settlement, as they apply to cross-border international economic transactions.