Investment Treaties and the Legal Imagination

Nicolas Perrone's fascinating book explores the blueprint that had been made in the 1950s and 1960s for the setting up of a system of international investment protection. At a time when the reform of this system is being contemplated, this timely book calls our attention to the early thinking of a coalition of diverse leaders from business, law and finance, and to how arbitrators willingly carried out the ideas in the blueprint by building a legal superstructure through the interpretation of the investment treaties. * Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah, Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore * This timely book subverts the tradition by offering its own, meticulously researched and boldly argued, story of international investment law. Perrone unmasks the hidden figures whose legal and political imagination spawned the global regime of investment protection, unveiling the key drivers behind its creation and rapid expansion in the recent decades. * Mavluda Sattorova, Reader, Liverpool Law School * Perrone's book is an elegantly written account of both investment law's origin story and its contemporary practice. Taking a deep dive into the archives and the jurisprudence, readers learn that arbitral output today is fully faithful to the legal imagination of the regime's founding fathers. Like their predecessors, contemporary norm entrepreneurs elide engagement with local communities even as the regime moves to adopt a proceduralist, good governance, rationale. Inviting readers to rethink the investment law regime, Perrone offers a critical and timely intervention, conjoining the present with the past, with a view to imagining a different future for international law. * David Schneiderman, Professor of Law and Political Science, University of Toronto *