Hulsebosch on Protecting Foreign Expectations in the Early United States @nyulaw

Daniel J. Hulsebosch, New York University School of Law, is publishing From Imperial to International Law: Protecting Foreign Expectations in the Early United States in volume 65 of the the UCLA Law Review Discourse (2018). Here is the abstract.

This Essay argues that several principles associated with modern international investment law and dispute resolution arose in the wake of the American Revolution, as the revolutionaries and Britons sought to restructure trade relations, previously regulated by imperial law, under new treaties and the law of nations. They negotiated such problems as the currency in which international debts would be paid; the ability of foreign creditors pursue domestic collection remedies; whether creditors had to exhaust those remedies before their nation could resort to international arbitration; and the form of state-state arbitration of private disputes. The specific setting of these negotiations — the aftermath of a colonial settler revolution — narrowed the compass of disagreement, compared to many later postcolonial negotiations. In addition, the negotiations assumed that the exhaustion of national remedies remained the standard method of resolving private debt disputes. Notwithstanding these important differences, the principles and institutions developed after an imperial civil war influenced the development of international investment law.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.