Publications

The recent decision of the Hague District Court in Friends of the Earth v Royal Dutch Shell marks the first instance where a duty was cast on a corporation to reduce its carbon emissions. Consequently, this decision is significant in the efforts to create a regime of corporate emissions liability. Little attention, however, has been spent on how this decision treats legal entities. In holding Royal Dutch Shell responsible for Shell…

Arbitrating corruption issues tends to highlight what has been called the paradox of arbitration, i.e., that arbitration must remain tethered to the very public authorities it seeks freedom from. And while friction is perhaps inevitable with public illegalities being addressed in what are essentially private procedures, it is also a useful litmus test of arbitration’s fitness to deal with rapidly expanding frontiers. This paper…

This paper compares capital flow regulation across the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund, Bilateral Investment Treaties (specifically the US Model BIT 2012), and the GATT and the GATS agreements administered by the World Trade Organization. Revisiting these regulatory frameworks is significant in the context of increased global liquidity following the extensive use of unconventional monetary policies in recent…

This article assesses and provides context to India’s first (complete) investor-state arbitration i.e. the recent award in White Industries v. Republic of India. It discusses the general framework of India’s investment treaty obligations and, in specific, the ​‘denial of justice’ and ​‘effective means’ standards via three sections: the first introduces India’s experience with investment arbitration and its BIT framework, the second…

Cross-border investment has steadily grown to become an outstanding feature of economic integration and is increasingly perceived as a direct indicator of development. Recent statistics are telling: over $1.5 trillion in investment flows under the regulatory umbrella of an estimated 2000 bilateral investment agreements and 300 regional agreements. However, those sunny statistics are in contrast to the shadows in the underlying legal…