Internationale Investitionsschiedsgerichtsbarkeit und Konstitutionalisierung - Akteursvielfalt und Kontestation im Bereich gerichtlicher Auseinandersetzung

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Karsten Nowrot
• Subject Area: Public Law
• Term: from 2016 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 319173268

The proposed project's research objective consists in identifying the effects of legal discourses concerning the international protection of foreign investments in the formal context of courts and quasi-judicial bodies (arbitration) on global constitutionalisation. To that end it focusses on the contestation of constitutional norms - such as in particular property rights and the rule of law - in the legal arena of investor-state dispute settlement. International investment arbitration proceedings have recently emerged as an important, albeit in itself increasingly controversial, legal arena for the contestation of fundamental constitutional principles in a transboundary context being shaped by a growing variety of different actors: It is argued that these formal processes are an almost ideal reference field, the analysis of which will contribute to the RU's leading research question regarding the changing narrative of global constitutionalisation. The project therefore studies the respective contestatory practices as an important case of global constitutional contestation that - considering the diversity of governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental actors involved - actually takes place from below and from above.During the first phase (years 1-3) the project (1) reconstructs dominant constitutional narratives on investor-state arbitration in particular with regard to the rule of law and the appropriate level of protection granted to property rights of foreign investors; (2) identifies the different categories of actors that partake in the formal contestatory practices vis-à-vis these norms and selects specific cases for an in-depth analysis; and (3) investigates whether alternative narratives have emerged that may ultimately result in changing normative substances in particular groups of state and/or non-state actors. The results stand to be examined by further research when the project turns to the effect of these changes on political and legal power shifts in the realm of international investment arbitration during the second phase (years 4-6).¿

• DFG Programme: Research Grants