Trends and Challenges in the Legal Harmonisation of ISDS

The creation of international law has moved from the traditional state-centred model to a multilateral process where states, judiciary, private tribunals, international organizations and other non-state actors all jointly contribute to the development of international law across a range of fora. The combined roles of government and non-state actors and their interaction within the legislative development process become especially apparent in the growing area of international investment law and investment disputes.<br><br>The current landscape of international investment law consists of thousands of different international trade and investment agreements with differing provisions, resulting in a fragmented legal framework that hinders the development of uniform principles in the field and leads to the criticism the system faces today. As a result, the UNCITRAL has been given a broad mandate to identify and address concerns regarding ISDS. The different stakeholders directly or indirectly affected by the system create a tension in the harmonised regulation of the field, the current work on the ISD reform nicely reflecting the correlation between the top-down approach and a bottom-up influence over legal harmonisation, which today appears to have taken a rather multidimensional shape.