Jed Odermatt and David Seymour
On 23 September 2022 the City Law School held its Research & Enterprise Day on the theme of Legal London. The event was an opportunity to highlight the research, teaching and scholarship at City Law School and to develop links across the University, professions and the wider community.
The concept of international investment law evolved mainly for the purpose of giving protection to foreign investment. That is why only investors can bring a claim of breach of protection standards before the investment arbitral tribunal and the tribunal only follows the concerned International Investment Agreements (IIAs) to determine such breach. However, with the advent of the concept of sustainable development, nowadays, environmental protection of a host State has become a major concern in competition with the investment protection before the investor-state arbitral tribunal. States are now frequently claiming the prevalence of their regulatory power for environmental protection over investment protection. In some cases, for example Glamis v US, the tribunal’s decision was influenced by the State’s regulatory power for environmental protection. In some recent cases, for example Burlington v Ecuador and Perenco v Ecuador, environmental issues arose with some separate standing. In these cases, the tribunals entertained host States’ counterclaims and awarded compensation against the investors. In such backdrop, I would like to have a detour in an arbitral decision wherein environmental issues were raised by the State for the first time. I want to look back how the tribunal had decided that case.
In the arbitration proceedings in Green Power Partners K/S & SCE Solar Don Benito APS v Spain (SCC 2016/135) the tribunal decided that it has no jurisdiction to hear and decide the claims before it. This finding is important because it is the first time that an arbitral tribunal has accepted the so-called ‘intra-EU’ objection to admissibility of claims between EU Member States.
The UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 contains an odd section concerning ‘computer-generated works’. Section 9(2) of the Act states that when a work has no ‘human author’ and is generated by a computer, the work ought to be protected by copyright for 50 years, with the copyright owned by the person who made the necessary ‘arrangements’ for the work’s generation.
The 12th World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference took place in Geneva last week with representatives of all 164 member countries in attendance – collectively comprising the WTO’s highest decision-making body. The stakes were high – there have been no major multilateral trade initiatives in decades, leaving the 27-year-old organization struggling to justify its existence in a world increasingly dominated by bilateralism or worse, economic isolationism. In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine, both of which have dealt significant blows to standards of living worldwide, the WTO was under much pressure to deliver tangible progress in trade liberalization. In the minds of many, failure was simply not an option.
Artificial intelligence poses new questions for intellectual property (IP) law. Can machines be inventors for purposes of patent law? Do creative works produced by AI deserve copyright protection? Is new legislation required to govern AI creativity? Courts, IP offices, and legislators in multiple jurisdictions are considering these questions.
This article considers that, in the current state of international justice, informal People’s Tribunals (PTs) constitute indispensable, quasi-judicial institutions that bridge gaps in access to justice, challenge official narratives (or silences) about atrocities and, potentially, open up new avenues towards justice and recognition.
This article focuses on the challenges of ‘long-delayed’ prosecutions, that is, criminal prosecutions that begin decades after the conflict, using the experience of the International Criminal Tribunal for Bangladesh (ICT-BD) as a case study. This issue is still an insufficiently discussed topic even though such prosecutions are likely to become more common in the future. This is because of the greater emphasis that is being placed on fighting impunity around the world, as well as legal and historical reckoning with past atrocities. As one ICT-BD prosecutor put it, the establishment of the ICT-BD in Bangladesh has opened the door for the possibility of accountability in other South Asian countries and more broadly. One day, the political leaders of such countries may find the political will to try perpetrators of mass atrocities even after a long delay. Indeed, it is possible that such prosecutions may become more common:
Andrea Maria Pelliconi, Alex Gilder, Kseniya Oksamytna
United Nations (UN) peace operations are typically a troubled sea to navigate. Peace operations operate in increasingly hostile environments and have to manoeuvre through dangerous waters: continuing insurgencies, ineffective state presence, widespread violence and insecurity, and even terrorist attacks. Stabilisation efforts may carry human rights and humanitarian risks, especially when they come with heavy militarisation, or with mandates that leave the mission without a clear political direction. These dangers bring about potential shortcomings in effectiveness, and even legitimacy challenges. Yet peace operations remain a crucial tool to attempt to advance peace and stability.
Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, several nations, led by Canada and Ukraine, suspended the application of the World Trade Organization’s Most Favoured Nation (MFN) treatment to Russian goods. MFN is a foundational principle of WTO law, contained in Article I of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). It promises that all WTO members will receive the same treatment as each other – the lowest tariffs on all goods offered by each WTO member will be made available to all. The effect of this trade sanction against Russia will not be lost on its president – Vladimir Putin’s masters’ thesis was allegedly on the importance of the MFN principle to international trade. The actual impact of the revocation of MFN on Russia may be less significant and the legal issues behind it are complex and troubling.
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