ISDS | ENERGY & MINING | SOVEREIGN DISPUTES When a government cancels a license, freezes a concession or taxes a transaction retroactively, the foreign investor faces an unusual opponent: a sovereign that writes the laws, staffs the courts and often owns the assets in question. Investment treaties exist to redress that imbalance by letting the
Two companies disputing a supply contract and an investor disputing a license revocation with a national government may both end up in arbitration, but the resemblance largely ends there. A commercial dispute is bounded by the four corners of a contract and the commercial law the parties chose to govern it. A sovereign dispute adds
Sovereign Disputes vs Commercial Disputes: Why the Arbitrator’s Experience Matters Read More »
Cross-border disputes rarely announce themselves gently. A concession renegotiated by a change in government, a pipeline delayed by permitting disputes, a transmission project caught between two regulatory regimes each can escalate from a contractual disagreement into a matter of national consequence within months. What separates a dispute that is resolved efficiently from one that drags
Why Sovereign States and Global Infrastructure Turn to Independent Arbitrators Read More »
Not every dispute with a foreign government belongs in ordinary commercial arbitration. Many investors only discover this once a regulatory decision has already reshaped their project, by which point the more useful question is no longer “was our contract breached?” but “does international law give us a separate route to relief?” Recognizing that shift early,
