Forum-shopping and Amicus

Abstract

The article by Professor's Bjorklund article underlines the complexity encountered by parties with respect to international investment litigation. The factors pertaining to this complexity are multiple and exist at virtually every stage in an investment operation. Among these factors of complexity, one can cite two important aspects:
? The bodies of law and norms that are interlinked are manifold
? The potentially applicable concepts are myriads and possess a hybrid nature in terms of investment law. This helps the concepts locate its corresponding principles both in private international law and public international law.
This philosophy of diversification of concepts and the mixture of logic, leads to a system that might declare a philosophy as one with lacking coherence, efficiency and thus uncertainty for the parties. To some extent, one might believe that this system will produce unfair results and will indirectly or directly abuse the process. Indeed, as the author demonstrates, adjudicatory competition among international tribunals is not advantageous for the parties that appear before them. There are two main reasons that make the international tribunal incapable of dealing with competition. These reasons are elucidated as under:
a. The available remedies and jurisdictional authority is very often fragmented among tribunals. This compels the parties to seek relief in multiple forays.
b. With respect to overlapping issues in tribunal jurisdiction and duplication in proceedings, the tools made available to the tribunals are very less. This leaves the tribunal in a very difficult situation of coping with adjudicatory competition.