Introduction

Before 1995, only a handful of arbitrations involved claims under investment treaties. During the last five years, however, the number of cases has exploded. There are now over sixty known arbitrations involving investment treaties, and these claims typically involve amounts ranging from U.S. $120 million to "billions and billions" of dollars. The consequence of this growth is that decisions about public issues with economic and political consequences are resolved in private before different sets of individuals who can and do come to conflicting decisions on the same points of ...