12 January
Public lecture by Martins Paparinskis, Hauser Research Scholar at the New York University and D Phil candidate at the University of Oxford, the Queen's College "Circumstances Precluding Wrongfulness in International Economic Law: Selected Legal Issues"
Outline
Different facets of the relationship between international economic law and the law of State responsibility raise complex questions about fragmentation and proliferation and may also have significant practical impact. This presentation attempts to map certain facets of this relationship, basing itself on recent cases where circumstances precluding wrongfulness have been invoked in investment protection law and the law of the World Trade Organisation. Investment arbitration cases arising out of the Argentinean financial crisis and the US-Mexico soft drinks dispute will be discussed to identify the limits of respectively necessity and countermeasures in investment law. The second part of the presentation will deal with the application of countermeasures in cases when primary rules expressed in investment treaties and WTO rules provide equivalent protection, discussing some theoretical and practical problems caused by proliferated adjudicators and lex specialis secondary rules.
The presentation develops arguments made in M Paparinskis, ‘Investment Arbitration and the Law of Countermeasures’ (2008) 79 British Ybk Intl L 264; and M Paparinskis, ‘Equivalent Primary Rules and Differential Secondary Rules: Countermeasures in WTO and Investment Protection Law’ in T Broude and Y Shany (eds), Multi-Sourced Equivalent Norms (Hart Publishing, Oxford forthcoming 2010).