Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
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Emilie Hafner-Burton ─ Predictability versus Flexibility: Secrecy in International Investment Arbitration

Thursday, October 12, 2017

12 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.

McKinney Conference Room

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There is heated debate over the wisdom and effect of secrecy in international negotiations. This debate has become central to the process of foreign investment arbitration because parties to disputes nearly always can choose to hide arbitral outcomes from public view. Working with a new database of disputes at the world’s largest investor-state arbitral institution, the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, the authors examine the incentives of firms and governments to keep the details of their disputes secret.

Emilie Hafner-Burton is director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation and is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of International Justice and Human Rights at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. She is also a joint professor for the Department of Political Science.