Abstract:
The relationship between international law and international investment law has taken on a greater significance with the extraordinary flourishing of investment treaties in recent years. Although in a formal sense investment treaties differ little from other international treaties, the legal regimes they create are often at variance with the assumptions underlying the traditional sovereign state model. Is international investment law a self-contained regime? To say that there is continuity between international law and international investment law does not imply a sort of pre-established harmony between the system and its sub-system. Rather, an appropriate equilibrium needs to be found by the adjudicators who should act as cartographers of international law according to customary rules of treaty interpretation. A survey of recent cases involving elements of cultural heritage shows that investment treaty arbitration has increasingly become permeable to non-investment values. This trend seems to confirm the unity of public international law.