As with all arbitration, consent lies at the root of arbitration of foreign investment disputes.1 It is all the more relevant in such arbitration as a State, a sovereign entity, is involved. Where there is a contract of foreign investment containing an arbitration clause, there can be little doubt that future disputes arising from the contract could be submitted to the tribunal indicated in the arbitration clause as the clause manifests the consent of the parties to such arbitration. The phenomenon that arises in modern foreign investment arbitration which involves a State as one of the parties is the claim that consent to arbitration could be created from a State’s unilateral offer of such arbitration. Such a unilateral offer could be made either through its foreign investment legislation or through the dispute resolution provision in an investment treaty.

The expression “international arbitration” encompasses everything from historic State-to-State border disputes to routine business transactions having an international dimension (such as contracts for the transportation of goods). International commercial arbitration frequently involves State-controlled entities, and indeed a lesser but still significant number of arbitrations have been brought by foreign investors having a direct contractual relationship with a State, such as the famous Aramco case1 involving the effectiveness against Aramco of a 30-year preference granted to Aristotle Onassis by Saudi Arabia to transport oil produced in the Kingdom and AMINOIL v. Kuwait,2 which dealt with the international lawfulness of the expropriation of an important oil concession.

International arbitration differs from domestic arbitration. As Jan Paulsson puts it, ‘international arbitration is no more a “type” of arbitration than a sea elephant is a type of elephant’.1 Yet as with sea elephants there are different species of international arbitration. This book is about how the lines by which international arbitration’s principal forms – in the contexts of commercial disputes, disputes between a foreign investor and a State, disputes purely between States, and even between the State and its constituent part – grew separately but whose growth joined and overlapped.2 One misconception should perhaps be dispelled at the outset; that the classifications just mentioned depend upon the identity or status of the parties. For States too, and not just private parties, may become involved in an international commercial dispute. Not just with non-State, private actors but also between themselves. The distinction that matters lies instead in the precise legal relationship giving rise to the dispute submitted to arbitration. Less rare is a dispute under a foreign investment contract between a State and a private party which is submitted to arbitration seated in a neutral place or to ‘delocalised’ International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) arbitration. Thus, for the purposes of this Companion, an inter-State arbitration, properly called, is one whose applicable law is public international law. In the case of intra-State arbitration the precise nature of the parties’ legal relationship – whether that is a matter of domestic law, even domestic private law, or public international law – may form a large part of the issue.

The architecture of the world order that was constructed from the ruins of the World War II has preserved a precarious peace, while allowing historically unprecedented economic growth. In his Nobel Peace Prize speech, Barack Obama warned that “[a] decade into a new century, this old architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats.” It is dispiriting to reflect on how prescient Obama’s words, delivered in 2009, were. Even allowing for the fact that at any moment there will be contrary trends toward and away from goals, key pillars of that world order do seem wobbly and in danger of buckling. Consider just two foundational arrangements. First, the prohibition of conquest and acquisition of territory by force continues to be flouted in an increasing number of cases – Crimea, Nagorno Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Abyei, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Western Sahara, South China Sea, Tibet, the list goes on. Second, judgments of the International Court of Justice are effectively ignored, not by States ordinarily thought to be international renegades but also by sister judiciaries with long-standing claims to championing the rule of law: the US Supreme Court and the Italian Constitutional Court.

This chapter explores how the scientific and literary preoccupation with the sources of sensation and sensibility in the Romantic period results in a reassessment of the relationship between matter and spirit. The chemistry of Joseph Priestley and Humphry Davy on matter and respiration is read in the context of devotional practice and the poetry of Anna Letitia Barbauld, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Erasmus Darwin.

Arbitration is often called autonomous – either as a description of reality, or as a desirable situation. This is not at all an uncomplicated claim. What do such claims for autonomous arbitration mean? How does it fit with the history of law and state? Does autonomy exist in practice? Is it conceivable or desirable in theory? And if not, how should we understand the idea of autonomous arbitration instead? These are questions that this chapter addresses, on the basis of well-known debates and topics. The result is that autonomy of arbitration does not exist and probably could not exist. What proponents of autonomy really defend is a particular position for international arbitration.

An older narrative may be re-asserting itself. The view that international arbitration is an imperfect realisation of international judicial settlement now lingers. Similarly, there is the sense in some quarters that greater judicial supervision is desirable, not just by national courts but also at the international level. Such views may be expressed in various ways.

This chapter explores politics in the British Romantic period through a close examination of the highly politicized religion of Dissent in the 1790s, tracing in particular its arguments in political tracts and sermons against slavery, the war with France, and the growing inequality between rich and poor. The centrality of religion to an understanding of revolution, rights of man discourse, public worship, and civil liberty is found in the writings of Richard Price, Anna Letitia Barbauld, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with reference to Joseph Priestley, Joshua Toulmin, John Edwards, and John Prior Estlin. There is discussion of the chain of influence descending from Price to Barbauld to the young Coleridge, and a conclusion that looks at some of the continuities in Coleridge’s thinking between his earlier radicalism and his later prose works.

Comparisons can be theoretical but they become very practical when one has to choose between two or more options. Given the centrality of party autonomy in arbitration, i.e. the centrality of the parties’ choices, given the great discretion tribunals have in making choices when the parties have not done so, and given the need to understand often unfamiliar chosen laws, it is not surprising that comparative law plays a central role in international arbitration. The importance of comparative law to arbitration was emphasised in an article by Professor René David, one of the most famous professors of comparative law, which was published only a year after the signature of the New York Convention (translation in the footnote)

The colonial encounter with India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought the British in contact with new ideas, philosophy, and a new religion. This interface between Britain and India and the subsequent interest in, study, and translation of Hindu and Sanskrit texts by British officials and scholars greatly influenced British Romantic poets writing in the nineteenth century. This engagement also shaped Indians writing in the English language. This essay examines this interface and the influence of Hinduism on British Romantic literature.

The history of art in the Romantic period has usually been considered in secularized terms, with a focus on the genres of portraiture and landscape, and the impact of commercialization and public exhibitions. Religious painting was produced in Britain in these decades, including decorations and altarpieces for Anglican churches by Benjamin West, Henry Thomson, and even the landscape painter John Constable. In fact, religious pictures were produced more frequently and with greater ambition in the early nineteenth century than hitherto. Meanwhile, dissenting and esoteric faith commitments influenced the output of several significant artists, most notably William Blake. This essay explores the major changes in British religious art of the period and reflects on the reasons why religious images have been so often overlooked by mainstream art history.

‘There is nothing new under the sun’, said Ecclesiastes; and this is broadly true of inter-State arbitration (ISA), though some recent developments have perhaps thrown certain issues into greater prominence. So I shall here provide a fairly standard account of the factors which lead States to choose or refuse to arbitrate with other States. In the course of doing so, I shall allude to some issues that have recently arisen. I will consider: whether ISA is even available in a given situation; the need for consent; and the many pros and cons of this form of dispute settlement.

This essay investigates the influence of Romanticism on writings about the role of music in religious practice. It argues that this influence is evident in writers’ explorations of themes such as music’s relationship with poetry, and its ability to arouse or heighten human passions, as well as their broadening field of inquiry beyond Western Christianity.

This chapter offers a critical reading of Macbeth as a play preoccupied with war, including civil war and border warfare. Macbeth is arguably the greatest example of a character whose brutality is condemned so soon after being celebrated. There is an exploration of doublethink in a play that holds up savagery as heroism in its opening act in the shape of the severed head of a rebel and holds up the head of the executioner, a hero-turned-villain, in its closing scene. Working at the intersection of military history and medical humanities, this reading of the play tracks the effects and aftereffects of war and wounding, examines modern responses to the play by soldiers and psychiatrists that raise issues around care and control of veterans, addresses the politics of remembering and remembrance, and reflects on recent responses to Macbeth as a drama depicting the consequences of post–traumatic stress disorder.