On Wednesday, November 14, W&L Law Professor Susan Franck presented her work to UNCTAD’s Division of Investment and Enterprise, http://unctad.org/en/pages/DIAE/DIAE.aspx, in the Palais des Nations in Geneva, which is a portion of UNCTAD dedicated to exploring issues related to international investment and sustainable development, in an effort to understand the scope of and implications for investment treaty dispute resolution and conflict management. The presentation built on Professor Franck’s recent research that will shortly be forthcoming in the American Journal of International Law, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2156965, which explored initial data about amounts claimed and awarded in investment treaty disputes. Given recent major cases such as Occidental v. Ecuador, in which Ecuador was held liable for nearly $2 billion — http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-05/occidental-awarded-1-77-billion-in-ecuador-contract-dispute-1-.html — there is renewed interest in this type of arbitration. Professor Franck’s research is designed to explore whether cases such as Occidental are typical or aberrational and the normative implications of those determinations. In a two-hour presentation, Professor Franck explored the newest generation of data that is current to 2012 to provide a holistic assessment of investment treaty dispute resolution. The presentation covered issues related to 272 awards rendered up to 2012. With 517 variables, this means the research is now capable of analyzing more than 140,000 pieces of individual data to offer a more sophisticated systemic analysis of the system of investment arbitration. Data related to this presentation is forthcoming in Professor Franck’s book with Oxford University Press: Investment Treaty Arbitration: Myths, Realities and Costs.
Susan Franck joined the faculty as an Associate Professor in 2008. Professor Franck’s teaching and scholarship relates to international economic law and dispute resolution.
