NORM CONTESTATION ABOUT SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC INVESTMENT LAW DISPUTES

[摘要] This thesis analyses norm contestation about sustainable development in the context of international public investment law disputes in which environmental policies have been challenged as violation of an investor’s rights. Existing conflicts between economic and environmental policy at the domestic and international level can pose problems to policy makers. To better understand the dynamics present when problems arise and their origins, I argue that institutional factors influence the respective power of organizations engaged in strategic social construction and norm contestation in international economic law disputes.The thesis perceives institutional factors to include both procedural and substantive case characteristics. I examine what, in addition to facts provided in such cases, could matter in the determination of a case outcome, whereby my outcome of interest is an environmental policy permissible ruling in such investor-state disputes.The study investigates procedural characteristics of transparency and of public participation, constituting intra-institutional factors, because they depend on the governing rules for dispute settlement of the organization administering the dispute, where applicable. Substantive case characteristics of horizontal integration between international economic and environmental law regimes are assessed as inter-institutional factor. I thus construct specific procedural and substantive case characteristics to capture both: power distribution among organizations, and, some of the outcomes of norm contestations resulting from national and international law-making processes.I then explore whether –and find that indeed – transparency, public participation and horizontal integration as well as interpretation approach seem to show an influence on case outcomes, that is in the realm of an international law-application process. Suggesting that existing conflicts between environmental and economic policies could be understood as the outcome of norm contestation processes in different arenas engaging different actors, I then explain how my findings further inform the law-making process and thus can have policy implications. However, resulting policies in turn depend on outcomes of norm contestation among various actors in the law-making process and the decisions taken by states. This circular flow involving various processes at the domestic and international level is explicated with a model of interactions among actors in the context of norm contestation about sustainable development.

[发布机构] the University of Pittsburgh