Alvarez on Opinio Juris

NYU Law Professor Jose Enrique Alvarez will be guest blogging this week over at Opinio Juris.  He uses his first post to outline the broad challenges facing the international investment regime.  From the post:

When two of the leading capital exporters of the world – the United States and China – are also two of the leading capital importers, those countries’ respective investment protection treaties can be expected to cut both ways. Countries like these, which also include capital exporters/importers like India and Russia, have to worry both about protecting their foreign investors abroad as well as being sued by foreign investors that they host. Therein lies the regime’s current dilemma: investor-state arbitrations have become so popular – and visible, including in countries with hyperactive civil societies – that they have displaced the WTO as the focal point of competing contentions over the merits of economic globalization.