[Saïda El Boudouhi is a professor at Université Paris 8. She has held academic positions across leading French and European institutions and contributes actively to contemporary debates on the evolution of public international law]
Drawing from the Empirical Study on International Investment Law Protections in Global Banking and Finance (‘the Study’), the present post focuses on the reliance by investment arbitral tribunals on the police powers doctrine as mobilized in that specific case law. The authors of the Study have dedicated to the topic some attention in the main discussion, as well as one of the four Annexes entitled ‘Findings of Tribunals regarding police powers of States involving emergency measures’. The police powers doctrine thus stands out as playing a ‘critical role’ in investment arbitration in that sector (p. 36), even though it involves only a…
