Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This tutorial video provides an overview of ISLG’s Jurisprudence Citator.
The Jurisprudence Citator enables you to instantly see
how specific decisions, awards and judgments from previous cases have been considered by investment treaty tribunals.
When you open up the Jurisprudence Citator under the Research Tools tab, you are presented with three categories of jurisprudence:
NAFTA Jurisprudence... Investment Treaty Jurisprudence... and Non-Investment Treaty Jurisprudence.
The last category is interesting since all the cases listed are not investment treaty cases,
and therefore full copies of the decisions are not available on the system.
However, this tool still allows you to see how these outside sources have been considered within the investment treaty arbitration context.
The cases are divided into various types and selecting each heading will provide you with a list of all the cases applicable to that type.
You can also search for cases in the search field above.
For example, if you search the term “elsi”,
the search will provide you with result based on where that term appears in the case names within the tool.
The results include the ELSI case, a judgment by the International Court of Justice.
Selecting the result brings to you to the entry within the tool.
First note that because the full text of this decision is not available on ISLG,
you are provided with a citation that will enable you to easily retrieve a copy from an external search.
Below, you are presented with two tools: Specific References and General References.
Starting with General References,
selecting this tab will present you with a reverse chronological list of investment treaty decisions and awards that have referred to the ELSI case.
Selecting any of these decisions or awards will present you with a pinpoint reference,
which if selected brings you directly to the passage where the tribunal referred to the ELSI case.
This is a very useful tool since it enables you to quickly browse through the listed decisions and awards
and see how they have considered the case in question.
However, there are limitations with this tool.
This is a result of the fact that general references do not provide you with any context on why tribunals are referring to a case.
In other words, they do not tell you what issue each tribunal is considering
and whether that issue is relevant to that what made you interested in the case in question.
The Specific References tab provides you with that extra level of context.
The tool takes all the decisions and awards listed under the General References tab
and isolates them down to those that refer to a specific paragraph of the case you are looking up.
For example, if you were interested in paragraph 128 of the ELSI case,
selecting the link to that paragraph will provide you with a list of decisions and awards that have referred to that specific paragraph,
and as a result, will likely limit your results to those decisions and awards
that have referred to ELSI case because they are referring to the same issue that is relevant to your research.
For example, selecting the Decision on Liability for Total v. Argentina produces a pinpoint reference to paragraph 110.
Navigating through that paragraph
reveals that the tribunal is the referring to the ELSI case in the context of discussing the issue of "arbitrariness”.
This will be the theme for all the case listed under this tool.
Because they are all specific referring to paragraph 128 of ELSI,
they are all likely dealing with the same issue dealt with in that specific paragraph.
This tool saves you time by avoiding the need to review all the decisions and awards listed under the General References tab
by taking you only to those decisions that are directly relevant to the issue that made you interested in the case in question.
The same process can be applied to any of the Investment Treaty cases.
Rather than list the type of cases, the cases are listed in alphabetical order by respondent state.
Selecting any of the listed cases
will open up a list of decisions and awards from the case that have had subsequent consideration by other tribunals,
and will present you with the same ability to look up both general and specific references to the decision or award in question.
That concludes the tutorial of the Jurisprudence Citator tool,
which should give you a thorough understanding of how the tool enables you to instantly see how specific decisions
have been treated by subsequent investment treaty tribunals.
If you have any questions or need further information, please contact us.
We also encourage you to submit your feedback through the Subscriber Feedback tool
found at the bottom right hand corner of each screen on ISLG.