Event

Biased? A Discussion on Investor Bias in Investor-State Arbitration

Tuesday, April 9, 2013 18:00to19:30
Chancellor Day Hall Maxwell Cohen Moot Court (Room 100), 3644 rue Peel, Montreal, QC, H3A 1W9, CA

The international investment arbitration system has been heavily criticized for its apparent bias towards investors. Come hear what some experts think about these criticisms.

The McGill Arbitration Society has invited Simon Lester, Trade Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, and Luke Eric Peterson, Editor of Investment Arbitration Reporter, to give us their perspectives on investor bias and the state of investment arbitration.

The discussion will be moderated by McGill University’s Professor Fabien Gélinas.

A request for accreditation by the Barreau du Québec has been submitted.

RSVP à mcgill [at] arbitrationsociety.ca.

About the panelists

Simon Lester is a trade policy analyst with Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies. Before joining Cato, he worked for the trade law practice of a Washington, D.C. law firm, and also as a Legal Affairs Officer at the Appellate Body Secretariat of the World Trade Organization. In 2001, he founded the international trade law web site WorldTradeLaw.net. His work has appeared in such publications as the Stanford Journal of International Law, the George Washington International Law Review and the Journal of World Trade. He has taught courses on international trade law at American University’s Washington College of Law and the University of Michigan Law School. He has a J.D. from Harvard Law School and has been a member of the D.C. Bar since 1996.

Luke Eric Peterson is the editor of Investment Arbitration Reporter, a news and analysis service focusing on international arbitrations between foreign investors and their host governments. He has more than a decade of experience tracking and analyzing the international legal and policy regime governing foreign direct investment. He has reported on investment arbitration claims for various media outlets and has conducted specialized research on the foreign investment regime for several agencies of the United Nations (UNDP, UNCTAD) and for a number of other non-governmental research organizations. His work has also appeared in academic and practitioner journals such as the ICSID Review, Stockholm International Arbitration Review, and Arbitration International.

Fabien Gélinas teaches and conducts research in the areas of international dispute resolution, constitutional law and legal theory. Formerly General Counsel of the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce, he is a member of the Quebec Bar (1990) and acts as arbitrator and as consultant on dispute resolution and legal reform.

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