{"id":2034,"date":"2010-01-01T09:01:35","date_gmt":"2010-01-01T13:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/site\/?p=2034"},"modified":"2010-09-30T10:20:43","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T14:20:43","slug":"issue_51-1_mortenson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/2010\/01\/issue_51-1_mortenson\/","title":{"rendered":"The Meaning of \u201cInvestment\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Abstract<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Tribunals have sharply curtailed the categories of investment eligible for protection under international investment law\u2019s keystone treaty, the ICSID Convention. This Article urges them to reverse that trend and recognize that ICSID has jurisdiction over any plausibly economic asset or activity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Tribunals\u2019 sudden constriction of what constitutes \u201cinvestment\u201d arises in the first instance from a widespread historical misunderstanding. Commentators have commonly acted as though the Convention\u2019s omission of a definition for \u201cinvestment\u201d amounts to a wholesale delegation of the question to arbitral tribunals for case-by-case lawmaking. That premise is mistaken. The Convention\u2019s travaux demonstrate that the drafters adopted a clear\u2014and extremely broad\u2014meaning of \u201cinvestment.\u201d It is not that all parties agreed on this broad understanding from the start. Rather, the broad definition was part of a compromise reached after long and contentious negotiations over what that definition should be. The other element of the compromise was a series of opt-out provisions by which states could narrow the Convention\u2019s capacious baseline definition on an individual basis.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The historical arrangement properly reflects the deference that international tribunals owe to state autonomy. This Article suggests three reasons for tribunals to respect a state\u2019s decision to extend ICSID protection to a given category of enterprise. First, the historical approach retains policy flexibility in a pluralist world occupied by diverse state actors with shifting policy preferences. Second, it delegates economic decisions to political entities that generally have a comparative advantage in both expertise and legitimacy. Third, it recognizes that the operative legal term is meant to facilitate state action, not to restrain state autonomy. This Article therefore argues that international tribunals should respect the ICSID framework as it was originally established: an adaptable vehicle with the capacity to satisfy many states\u2019 preferences and the flexibility for individual states to change their investment policies over time.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tribunals have sharply curtailed the categories of investment eligible for protection under international<br \/>\ninvestment law\u2019s keystone treaty, the ICSID Convention. This Article urges them to reverse that trend and recognize that ICSID has jurisdiction over any plausibly economic asset or activity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-print-archives"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZu3S-wO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}