No, I’m not referring to the presence or otherwise of something like MSG (monosodium glutamate) in the daily food intake of the remarkably long-lived Japanese people! Rather, this brief posting will highlight a fascinating and insightful recent article by Kyoto University Professor Shotaro Hamamoto about treaty-based Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) as an additional option typically provided for foreign investors seeking to enforce substantive treaty commitments offered by host states, alongside inter-state arbitration. Professor Hamamoto is a world-renowned international law expert, and it was a great learning experience to collaborate with him on a project some years ago where we reverse-engineered both the substantive and procedural provisions of Japan’s investment treaties.
His recent article, for a JWIT special issue on “Dawn of an Asian Century in International Investment Law?”, is entitled: “Recent Anti-ISDS Discourse in the Japanese Diet: A Dressed Up But Glaring Hypocrisy”. The analysis is important and timely given the question of whether and how the expanded Transpacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement will be ratified and brought into force across the present 12 economies, including Japan, the US and Australia. One focus of public debate remains the TPP’s inclusion of ISDS-backed investment commitments (now outlined by the Australian government here, and earlier subjected to my preliminary analysis here), along with some broader doubts about the overall benefits of FTAs generally (as I discussed on a panel with economists and a journalist at a recent Lowy Institute seminar).
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