Investor-State Arbitration Tribunals

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Essential Security Interests Exceptions and the Limits of Self-Judgment: Implications of Riverside Coffee v Nicaragua

March 19, 2026

In recent years, national security has increasingly served as a justification to deviate from international law obligations. The ICSID award in Riverside Coffee v Nicaragua has added a new layer to the developing case law on the interplay between essential security interests exceptions and the notion of self-judgment in the context of investment arbitration.  Where treaties seek to accommodate security-related concerns, it is often in the form of essential security interests exceptions. These are frequently combined with ‘self-judging’ language, that is, wording that grants the invoking State particular authority in determining the application of the exception. In the past decade, States have relied on such clauses with increasing frequency, giving rise to a growing body of decisions addressing their interpretation (e.g., Seda v Colombia, discussed here, and by the author on this blog) and renewed scholarly attention to the notion of self-judgment in international law (e.g., here and here). Against this backdrop, this post begins by briefly setting out…

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Time, Form, and Coalitions: Reflections on the 53rd Session of UNCITRAL Working Group III

February 13, 2026

The 53rd Session of UNCITRAL Working Group III (WGIII), held in mid-January 2026 in New York, marked another modest but revealing step in the long road toward reforming investor–State dispute settlement (ISDS). The meeting delivered some progress, particularly in clarifying what kind of legal instrument(s) might eventually emerge from the cluster of partially linked reform options grouped together for discussion…

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EU Sanctions and the Undoing of International Investment Arbitration

January 15, 2026

Sailing Yacht A in the Gulf of Trieste, seized in 2022 under the EU sanctions regime. It is well known that the EU has a complicated relationship with international investment arbitration. Whilst the two appear to be grounded in comparable commitments to a liberal international economic order, EU institutions have taken the view that investor-state dispute…

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Expropriation, Oil and the Prohibition on the Use of Force: Justification Narratives and the Effectiveness of International Law in the Venezuela Crisis

January 13, 2026

The US military intervention in Venezuela amounts to a manifest breach of the prohibition on the use of force under international law. Neither self-defence nor authorization by the UN Security Council can be invoked to justify the use of military force under these circumstances. The operation also clearly violates the principle of non-intervention, as it was explicitly aimed…

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Reassessing Consent in Counterclaims: Rebalancing Investment Protection and Public Interest under the UNCITRAL ISDS Reform

November 27, 2025

In mid-2025, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Working Group III (WGIII) released a new set of Draft Provisions on Procedural and Cross-Cutting Issues, as part of its ongoing reform of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), which aims at addressing long-standing concerns about the fairness, balance, and effectiveness of the current system. One of…

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