On The Establishment Of Precedent System Of International Investment Arbitration

International investment arbitration mechanism which represented by ICSID, is an important platform in resolving the investment disputes between investors and the host countries in the world today. It plays a crucial role in smoothing out the investment conflicts, safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of investors and the host countries, promoting the mutual investment between countries and as a result, accelerating integration and development of global economy. However, with the increase of international investment disputes, there is exponentially considerable frequency that investment arbitration tribunals making inconsistent or even contradictory verdicts on the cases with identical or similar facts and legal issues. Without consistency and coherence, arbitral decisions have broken the legitimate expectation of investors and the host countries on the dispute resolution, caused the welter of international investment, brought the confusion to international investment practices. In the mean time, it has undermined the credibility of arbitration award among investors and the host countries, and led to the legitimacy crisis of the international investment arbitration mechanism. Taking above into consideration, the author recommends introducing a precedent system into international investment arbitration. Based on the necessity and feasibility analysis, the author makes a reference to the relevant practices of WTO and the European Court, and ultimately establishes a precedent system of international investment arbitration. This paper is divided into five chapters:The first chapter is an overview. It gives a clear definition of the precedent system of international investment arbitration in this paper, which, in order to differentiate from the stare decisis of the Anglo-American law system. On such basis, it further expounds the significance of establishing the precedent system of international investment arbitration.The second chapter mainly extends the necessity of a precedent system in the international investment arbitration. Through empirical analysis on a series of investment cases, this chapter amplifies the necessity of such a precedent system in the following three dimension, impartiality, consistency and improvement of arbitral proceedings.The third chapter focuses on the feasibility of a precedent system in the international investment arbitration. On theoretical aspect, it covers the sources of international law, the similarities of investment disputes. On empirical aspect, given the tendency to the publication of arbitral decisions and a series of arbitral practice into consideration, this chapter further illustrates the feasibility of the precedent system. In addition, this chapter also pays attention to the practice of referring to prior case reports in WTO dispute settlement mechanism and preliminary ruling procedure of European Court, which can be a reference for establishing the precedent system in international investment arbitration.The fourth chapter offers practical ways for establishing a precedent system which aims to solve the above problems of international investment arbitration.The last chapter is conclusion.