The State-State Dispute Settlement Mechanism Under Iias

The State-State dispute settlement mechanism under international investment agreements(IIAs)has been neglected due to the wide application of investor-State dispute settlement mechanism.This dissertation relying on relevant IIAs,international awards,and academic outputs,adopting legal interpretation and policy recommendation as research methodology,studies the scope of the application of the State-State dispute settlement mechanism and its conflict and coordination with investor-State dispute settlement mechanism.The State-State dispute settlement mechanism applies to any dispute between the Parties concerning the interpretation or application of IIAs.This means that the conflict between the investor-State and State-State mechanism is unavoidable,which lies in the similarity rather than the difference of the scope of application of the two mechanisms.Realizing the close connection between the abuse of interpretative power and the legitimate crisis faced by investor-State arbitration,Contracting Parties start to reassert their ignored and shared interpretative power to actively participate in the balance of rights and obligations under IIAs.The approach under which the State-State arbitration under IIAs is treated as a way of achieving joint interpretations of disputing Parties can help restrict the interpretative discretion of investor-State tribunals and promote the predictability of IIAs and treaty-based investment arbitration.It is necessary to balance between the need of improving the consistency of tribunals' reading and avoiding States'undue intervention.Specifically,the State-State interpretative awards should be binding on subsequent investor-State tribunals to ensure the explicitly delegated interpretative power from States to interstate tribunals.However,when the institution of State-State procedures is the result of the race and intervention by States,such behavior should be regarded as the violation of the principal-trustee delegation model that relies heavily on the expertise and independence of the third-party judicial bodies.Under such circumstance,the prior investor-State tribunals do not need to consider the decision of the interstate tribunals.