In this concise history of expropriation of land for the common good in Europe and North America from medieval times to 1800, Susan Reynolds contextualizes the history of an important legal doctrine regarding the relationship between government and the in

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Issues in Expropriation reviews the contemporary major issues involving expropriation (eminent domain/compulsory purchase) in an international context. Expropriation is a right reserved to all governments, and, thus, it has an impact on all societies. This book, the first of its kind, considers the essential issues from the point of view of both developing and developed countries, and their needs for major infrastructure projects. The content covers major issues, principles and policies and includes the experiences of and examples from different countries and regions, including Australia, Asia, China, Europe, India and the USA. Rather than providing an in-depth examination of individual countries' legal systems, the book focuses on international issues, and also provides a reflection on how national experiences can be related to global needs. Key themes include: Nature and quantum of compensation - Land rights and the acquisition of traditional land rights - Issues surrounding 'public interest' -Alternatives to expropriation -The future: "good practice", debate and reform. This handbook is an essential resource for students and researchers in the areas of land policy, land law, property law and rights, and international development.

Many investment arbitration cases involve a challenge to a regulatory measure of a host state on the basis of indirect expropriation. The practice of arbitral tribunals is diverse and unsettled. In recent years States have been trying to clarify the relationship between regulatory freedom (also known as 'police powers') and indirect expropriation by revising provisions on indirect expropriation in their investment treaties. This book provides the first focused analysis of indirect expropriation and regulatory freedom, drawing on a broad range of the jurisprudence of investment tribunals. The nature of regulatory freedom in international law has been explained on the bases of jurisprudence of international courts and tribunals such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), dispute resolution bodies of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), European Court of Human Rights. While showing how cases involving standoff between regulatory freedom and indirect expropriation can be resolved in practice, the book goes on to present a conceptual framework for interpreting the nuances of this relationship. The book provides a detailed responses to the following complex questions: • To what extent do states retain regulatory freedom after entering into investment treaties? • What is the scope of regulatory freedom in general public international law? • What are the elements of regulatory freedom and standard of review? • How to draw a dividing line between regulatory freedom and indirect expropriation? • Whether the sole effects doctrine or the police powers is the appropriate method for distinguishing between regulatory freedom and indirect expropriation? While addressing these questions, the author analyses different theoretical approaches that reflect upon the relationship between regulatory freedom and indirect expropriation and how far they assist in understanding these potentially overlapping concepts; their relationship with each other; and the method for distinguishing between them. Given the dense network of around three thousand bilateral investment treaties (BITs) that impose an obligation to protect foreign investments in a State, this book will help practitioners identify, through analysis of cases from diverse fields, how a situation may be categorized either as regulatory freedom or as indirect expropriation. The analysis will also be of value to government officials and lawyers involved in negotiating and re-negotiating investment treaties, and to arbitrators who have to decide these issues. Scholars will welcome the book's keen insight into the contentious relationship between a customary international law norm and a treaty norm.

In the mid-1930s the Mexican government expropriated millions of acres of land from hundreds of U.S. property owners as part of President Lázaro Cárdenas’s land redistribution program. Because no compensation was provided to the Americans a serious crisis, which John J. Dwyer terms “the agrarian dispute,” ensued between the two countries. Dwyer’s nuanced analysis of this conflict at the local, regional, national, and international levels combines social, economic, political, and cultural history. He argues that the agrarian dispute inaugurated a new and improved era in bilateral relations because Mexican officials were able to negotiate a favorable settlement, and the United States, constrained economically and politically by the Great Depression, reacted to the crisis with unaccustomed restraint. Dwyer challenges prevailing arguments that Mexico’s nationalization of the oil industry in 1938 was the first test of Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy by showing that the earlier conflict over land was the watershed event. Dwyer weaves together elite and subaltern history and highlights the intricate relationship between domestic and international affairs. Through detailed studies of land redistribution in Baja California and Sonora, he demonstrates that peasant agency influenced the local application of Cárdenas’s agrarian reform program, his regional state-building projects, and his relations with the United States. Dwyer draws on a broad array of official, popular, and corporate sources to illuminate the motives of those who contributed to the agrarian dispute, including landless fieldworkers, indigenous groups, small landowners, multinational corporations, labor leaders, state-level officials, federal policymakers, and diplomats. Taking all of them into account, Dwyer explores the circumstances that spurred agrarista mobilization, the rationale behind Cárdenas’s rural policies, the Roosevelt administration’s reaction to the loss of American-owned land, and the diplomatic tactics employed by Mexican officials to resolve the international conflict.

This book outlines the protection standards typically contained in international investment agreements as they are actually applied and interpreted by investment tribunals. It thus provides a basis for analysis, criticism, and stocktaking of the existing system of investment arbitration. It covers all main protection standards, such as expropriation, fair and equitable treatment, full protection and security, the non-discrimination standards of national treatment and MFN, the prohibition of unreasonable and discriminatory measures, umbrella clauses and transfer guarantees. These standards are covered in separate chapters providing an overview of textual variations, explaining the origin of the standards and analysing the main conceptual issues as developed by investment tribunals. Relevant cases with quotations that illustrate how tribunals have relied upon the standards are presented in depth. An extensive bibliography guides the reader to more specific aspects of each investment standard permitting the book's use as a commentary of the main investment protection standards.

Are international tribunals heading towards greater sovereignty or towards greater liberalisation of property rights? Can we glean specific deductions from prevailing cases outside the expropriation arena? How can we justifiably extrapolate principles from international investment arbitration before modifying and applying these lessons to international human rights, the World Trade Organization regime and other dispute settlement systems? What, if any, degree of deference attends the assessment of various claims undertaken by international tribunals? Does this depend on high commerce, force majeure, military or paramilitary control, urgent nuclear and environmental considerations, transboundary harms, political instability, fraud and deception or other special circumstances? Where do textually strict treaty interpretations end and the general principles of international law take over? Can autonomous treaty interpretation by international tribunals be reconciled with the host State’s prerogative of defining its own protected public interests? Where is the tipping point, too frequently fraught with the potential to deprive States of the incentive to stay within the applicable international compact? These issues must be comparatively addressed. Contemporary international law developments and dislocations are occurring at a break-neck pace. We pause and contemplate the implications. Riddhi Dasgupta analyses the standards of Expropriation, Exhaustion of Local Remedies, Continuous Nationality, Non-Discrimination (National Treatment, Most Favoured Nation and Domestic Discrimination), Fair and Equitable Treatment, Minimum Standard of Treatment, and Compensation across international dispute settlement. The foundational and evolving concept of consent is required to justify all public international law, from genesis onwards. The potency of expropriation-based claims will continue to expand, and the comparative lessons drawn from various international law regimes will interplay to stirring effect. Writing accessibly, Dasgupta proposes various legal strategies going forward and makes analytical prognostications about this area of international law. Dasgupta presents influential interview and anecdotal results as well as statistics concerning the growing flow of investments in targeted jurisdictions and sectors. For the international lawyer’s benefit, the final chapter condenses the book’s tactical scenario-planning and advice. Institutional dialogues among tribunals as well as tribunal dialogues with politicians, investors, NGOs, and of course citizens (the ultimate boson) will assume absolutely indispensable significance. This will be the true tipping-point in the eye of the storm. Legitimacy, transparency, justice, efficiency and economy, candour, party autonomy, coherence, incentives, and the tense clash of interests reappear as the constant motifs in this important but relatively unknown saga. Studiedly neutral in its orientation, this book strives to promote constructive solutions as well as public awareness.

Hydrological variability, increasing competition for water, and the need for regulatory flexibility may increasingly compel governments to adopt measures with significant economic impact on foreign investment. In International Investment Law and Water Resources Management, Daza-Clark offers an appraisal of indirect expropriation, revisiting the well-known doctrine of the police power. Through the lens of international investment law, the author explores a framework that assesses the legitimate exercise of police power with particular attention to the special nature of water resources.