In fact, lawyers with either a commercial arbitration or a public international law background — the two approaches that most actively
shape international investment law and arbitration at present — stress such a limited function of arbitration, while having divergent views on what the rule of law may mean in this context.
This was recognized in the 1960s — many ILA participants expressed concerns about an
investment court having an outsize ability to
shape the
law, given the unsettled status of
international law regarding foreign
investment in the 1960s.