Footnotes:
1 Statute of the ICJ, reprinted in International Court of Justice, Charter of the United Nations, Statute and Rules of Court and other Documents 61 (No. 4 1978). Article 38(1) reads as follows:
2 E. De Brabandere, ‘Judicial and Arbitral Decisions as a Source of Rights and Obligations’ in T. Gazzini and E. De Brabandere (eds), International Investment Law: The Sources of Rights and Obligations (Martinus Nijhoff 2012) 248.
3 Nguyen Quoc Dinh, Patrick Dallier, Mathias Forteau, and Alain Pellet, Droit International Public (8th edn, LGDJ 2007) 126.
4 J. Crawford, Brownlie’s Principles of Public International Law (8th edn, Oxford UP 2012) 34; M. C. Bassiouni, ‘A Functional Approach to “General Principles of International Law” ’ (1990) 11 Michigan JIL 782; Charles T. Kotuby Jr and Luke A. Sobota, General Principles of Law and International Due Process: Principles and Norms Applicable in Transnational Disputes (Oxford UP 2017) 9. See also Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay (Argentina v Uruguay), Judgment, ICJ Rep. 2010, separate opinion of Judge Cançado Trindade, at para. 17.
5 See Chapter 1, Section 1.3.
6 P. Dumberry, The Formation and Identification of Rules of Customary International Law in International Investment Law (Cambridge UP 2016).
7 Throughout this book the terms ‘international investment law’, ‘investor–State arbitration’, or ‘investment arbitration’ will be used interchangeably. The abbreviation ‘GPL’ will be used to describe general principles of law. I will sometimes distinguish two different types of GPL by using the expression GPL foro domestico to refer to those principles grounded in the domestic legal orders of States and general principles of international law to describe those principles which emerge on the international legal order. These distinctions will be further explained below, see, Chapter 1, Sections 2.1 and 2.2.
8 Samantha Besson and Jean d’Aspremont, ‘The Sources of International Law: An Introduction’ in Samantha Besson and Jean d’Aspremont (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Sources of International Law (Oxford UP 2017) 2.
10 These publications include: T. Gazzini and E. De Brabandere (eds), International Investment Law: The Sources of Rights and Obligations (Martinus Nijhoff 2012); Patrick Juillard, ‘L’évolution des sources du droit des investissements’ (1994) 250 Rec. des Cours 9–216; M. Hirsch, ‘Sources of International Investment Law’, ILA Study Group on the Role of Soft Law Instruments in International Investment Law (2011) (also in Andrea K. Bjorklund and August Reinisch (eds), International Investment Law and Soft Law (Elgar 2012)); Martins Paparinskis, ‘Investment Protection Law and Sources of Law: A Critical Look’ (2009) 103 ASIL Proc. 76–9; C. J. Tams, ‘The Sources of International Investment Law’ in T. Gazzini and E. De Brabandere (eds), International Investment Law: The Sources of Rights and Obligations (Martinus Nijhoff 2012) 319–32; F. Grisel, ‘The Sources of Foreign Investment Law’ in Z. Douglas, J. Pauwelyn, and J. E. Viñuales (eds), The Foundations of International Investment Law: Bringing Theory into Practice, (Oxford UP 2014); Jorge E. Viñuales, ‘Sources of International Investment Law: Conceptual Foundations of Unruly Practices’ in Samantha Besson and Jean d’Aspremont (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Sources of International Law (Oxford UP 2017) 1069; Stephan W. Schill, ‘Sources of International Investment Law: Multilarization, Arbitral Precedent, Comparativism, Soft Law’ in Samantha Besson and Jean d’Aspremont (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Sources of International Law (Oxford UP 2017) 1095.
11 Jean d’Aspremont, ‘International Customary Investment Law: Story of a Paradox’ in T. Gazzini and E. De Brabandere (eds), International Investment Law: The Sources of Rights and Obligations (Martinus Nijhoff 2012) 8, further explaining that ‘Any investigation in the foundations of the sources of investment law may have seemed overly arcane to such practitioners, to whom the doctrine of sources of investment law may seem to work properly and an invitation to explore its theoretical foundations a purely academic whim’.
13 See also, the same assessment made in 1989 by Stephen Zamora, ‘Is there Customary International Economic Law?’ (1989) 32 German YIL 10–11, in the field of international economic law.
15 See Viñuales, ‘Sources of International Investment Law’ (n. 10) 1069, referring only once to GPL and indicating their gap-filling function (at 1091). See also, Schill, ‘Sources of International Investment Law’ (n. 10), also focusing mainly on investment treaties (‘At present, IIL, for all practical purposes, is equivalent to the law of investment treaties as interpreted and applied by investment treaty tribunals; other sources, such as custom or general principles, usually only come into play, not as independent sources, but merely in order to concretize and clarify the meaning of the often vague standards of treatment in investment treaties’). He examined GPL later in his article (1107ff.).
16 Juillard, ‘L’évolution des sources’ (n. 10) 133, referring only to the concept of ‘principe général du droit international’ and briefly mentioning that the FET standard is one such principle.
18 Tarcisio Gazzini, ‘General Principles of Law in the Field of Foreign Investment’ (2009) 10 J. World Inv. and Trade 103; Stephan W. Schill, ‘General Principles of International Law and International Investment Law’ in T. Gazzini and E. De Brabandere (eds), International Investment Law. The Sources of Rights and Obligations (Brill 2012) 133; Hirsch, ‘Sources of International Investment Law’ (n. 10). To this list should be added the important article by Michael D. Nolan and Frédéric Gilles Sourgens, ‘Issues of Proof of General Principles of Law in International Arbitration’ (2009) 3(4–5) World Arb. and Med. Rev. 505.
19 Kotuby and Sobota, General Principles of Law (n. 4).
20 Andrea Gattini, Attila Tanzi, and Filippo Fontanelli (eds), General Principles of Law and International Investment Arbitration (Brill 2018).
21 Mads Andenas, Malgosia Fitzmaurice, Attila Tanzi, and Jan Wouters (eds), General Principles and the Coherence of International Law (Brill 2019).
22 Jeswald W. Salacuse, ‘The Treatification of International Investment Law: A Victory of Form Over Life? A Crossroads Crossed?’ (2006) 3(3) TDM 5. See also Hirsch, ‘Sources of International Investment Law’ (n. 10) 7; Christoph H. Schreuer, Loretta Malintoppi, August Reinisch, and Anthony Sinclair, The ICSID Convention; A Commentary (2nd edn, Cambridge UP 2009) 605 (‘The large and rapidly growing number of BITs and multilateral treaties dealing with investment makes them the most important source of international law for ICSID tribunals.’)
23 Dumberry, The Formation and Identification of Rules of Customary International Law (n. 6) 351ff.
24 ILC, ‘First Report on Formation and Evidence of Customary International Law’, by Michael Wood, Special Rapporteur, Sixty-fifth session, Geneva, 6 May–7 June and 8 July–9 August 2013, UN Doc. A/CN.4/663, 17 May 2013, 20, 15. See also, Amoco Int’l Fin. Corp. v Iran, Iran–US Claims Tribunal, 14 July 1987, in (1990) 83 ILR, para. 112: ‘the rules of customary law may be useful in order to fill in possible lacunae of the treaty, to ascertain the meaning of undefined terms in the text or, more generally, to aid the interpretation and implementation of its provision’.
26 ILC, Report of the ILC, Seventieth session, 3433rd meeting, 19 July 2018, UN Doc. A/73/10, chap. XIII, sect. A, para. 363.
27 ILC, Sixth Committee, 2017, recommendation of the Working-Group on the long-term programme of work (see syllabus: A/72/10), by Mr Marcelo Vázquez-Bermúdez, para. 4, adding that while ‘a number of examples of general principles of law would be referred to in the commentaries’, it remains that ‘the objective of the topic would not be to catalogue existing general principles of law’.
29 A. Stone Sweet and G. Della Cananea, ‘Proportionality, General Principles of Law, and Investor–State Arbitration: A Response to José Alvarez’ (2014) 46(3) NYU JIL and Pol. 951.
31 Schill, ‘General Principles’ (n. 18) 136.
33 Andrea Gattini, Attila Tanzi, and Filippo Fontanelli, ‘Under the Hood of Investment Arbitration: General Principles of Law’ in A. Gattini, A. Tanzi, and F. Fontanelli (eds), General Principles of Law and International Investment Arbitration (Brill 2018) 1.
36 ibid., 20, referring to Pierre-Marie Dupuy, ‘La pratique de l’article 38 du statut de la Cour internationale de Justice dans le cadre des plaidoiries écrites et orales,’ in United Nations, Office of Legal Affairs (ed.), Collection of Essays by Legal Advisers of States, Legal Advisers of international Organizations and Practitioners in the Field of International Law (UN 1999) 394.
39 Schreuer et al., The ICSID Convention (n. 22) 606. See also: V Vadi, Analogies in International Investment Law and Arbitration (Cambridge UP 2016) 231; Gattini, Tanzi, and Fontanelli, ‘Under the Hood of Investment Arbitration’ (n. 33) 19; Attila Tanzi, ‘Conclusions: Testing General Principles of Law in International Investment Law: between Principles and Rules of International Law’ in Mads Andenas, Malgosia Fitzmaurice, Attila Tanzi and Jan Wouters (eds), General Principles and the Coherence of International Law (Brill 2019) 298.
40 Schreuer et al., The ICSID Convention (n. 22) 608.
41 ILC, Recommendation (n. 27) para. 12.
42 Malgosia Fitzmaurice, ‘The History of Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice: The Journey from the Past to the Present’ in Samantha Besson and Jean d’Aspremont (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Sources of International Law (Oxford UP 2017) 192.
43 ibid. See also, at 193: ‘General principles of law recognized by States within their domestic context, as postulated by the Committee, represent the past. The present is characterized by the emergence of general principles of international law sensu stricto, which derive from the international legal order and are fundamental to it, such as sovereign equality.’
48 C. McLachlan, ‘Investment Treaties and General International Law’ (2008) 57(2) ICLQ 395.
49 ILC, Recommendation (n. 27) para. 11.
50 Total v Argentina, Decision on Liability, ICSID Case No. ARB/04/1, 21 December 2010, paras 111, 128–30.
51 Schill, ‘General Principles’ (n. 18) 146.
54 Lord McNair, ‘The General Principles of Law Recognized by Civilized Nations’ (1957) 33 British YIL 15–16.
55 Kotuby and Sobota, General Principles of Law (n. 4).
56 Schill, ‘General Principles’ (n. 18) 152.
57 Kotuby and Sobota, General Principles of Law (n. 4) 15.
58 Robert Kolb, ‘Principles as Sources of International Law (With Special Reference to Good Faith)’ (2006) 53 Netherlands ILR 27.