Research On Umbrella Clause In Bilateral Investment Treaties

Umbrella Clause is a very common clause in today's bilateral investment treaties. Since this clause may elevate the contractual claims to treaty claims, the issue about how to interpret this clause has raised great arguments among the capital exporting countries and capital importing countries. Different tribunals has adopted various methods of interpretation in different cases and achieved different decisions. The academic circle also shows great interest in this problem and has conducted a heated debate about it.Besides the introduction and the epilogue, this thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction about the umbrella clause and reviews the origins and historical development of the umbrella clause;Chapter 2 is about the different cases relating to the umbrella clause. It also introduces and compares the two interpretative approaches conducted by the tribunals;Chapter 3 discusses the scope of the umbrella clause and analyzes the different influences of various wordings on scope;Chapter 4 is about the jurisdiction problem of umbrella clause;Chapter 5 puts forwards some suggestions to China about how to cope with umbrella clause during the practice.