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Abstract
This article articulates an ‘anti-reformist’ stance toward the reform of international investment law and dispute settlement. The mainstream debates over the future of investment law are generally ‘reformist,’ in the sense that they seek to maintain the system of special legal rights afforded to a discrete class of persons defined as ‘investors’. This system of special rights amplifies investors’ power vis-à-vis other constituencies and is premised on flimsy assumptions about the investor’s vulnerability that are not borne out either in theory or in practice. Drawing on recent work in other fields, this article sketches an anti-reformist approach that asserts these fundamental challenges, even as it remains engaged in contemporary reform debates. It also discusses the near-term implications of this approach for procedural and substantive reform of investment treaties, as well as the long-range goals of an anti-reformist stance.
Abstract
The current Africanization approaches mask some nuances present in current reform efforts of international investment law (IIL) and investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) in Africa. I adopt the categorization of international law scholarship in Africa developed elsewhere into two trends: contributionist (weak) and critical (strong) scholarship. For reforms in African IIL and ISDS, I relabel this trends benign Africanization representing the contributionist (weak) strand and radical Africanization representing the critical (strong) strand. I argue that African states must focus on wider economic justice engendered in the radical Africanization approach. I propose three lines of action that will implement radical Africanization: first African States, in their reforms, must focus on both extra and intra-African investment; second, the reforms must engage deeply seated substantive issues in addition to the current procedural reforms; and finally, African States must have a real reckoning and engagement with the imperial history of IIL generally and ISDS specifically.
Abstract
The reforms of investment treaties include the incorporation of flexibilities into standards of investment protection such as indirect expropriation to accommodate public interest regulatory autonomy. In this article, I assess the efficacy of these reforms by analysing the intersection of constitutional provisions on compulsory acquisition and regulation of property in selected African constitutions and expropriation provisions in investment treaties. I argue that indirect expropriation provisions in investment treaties are unconstitutional. I also argue that the new generation investment treaties which incorporate these exceptions do not preserve African States’ authority to acquire and regulate private property. The exceptions do not resolve the incompatibility between the constitutional authority to take and regulate property without paying compensation and African States’ investment treaty obligations on indirect expropriation. By providing for precatory and inefficacious exceptions to indirect expropriation while leaving intact substantive standards of investment protection, the reforms of investment treaties preserve an investment treaty law and arbitration regime that remains skewed towards investors and covered investments.