Fair and Equitable Treatment and the Fabric of General Principles

This book moves from the circumstance whereby currently the obligation to providefair and equitable treatment (FET) to foreign investments is included in the majority ofinternational investment agreements and has proved to be the most invoked standard ininvestor-State arbitration. Hence, it is no overstatement to describe this standard as thebasic norm of international investment law. Yet both its meaning and normative basiscontinue to be shrouded in ambiguity and, as a consequence, to inspire a considerablenumber of interpretations by legal writers. The book's precise aim is to unravel suchambiguity, arguing from the idea that FET has become part of the fabric of general internationallaw, but has done so by means of a source somewhat neglected in legal doctrine.This being the category of general principles peculiar to a certain field of internationallaw, i.e. those principles having their own foundations in the international legal orderitself, but which, through the mediation of the judge, end up being shaped accordingto the features typical of a specific normative field. The book, as well as having a solidtheoretical backdrop as its basis, offers a careful and critical analysis of pertinent caselaw, and will prove useful to both scholars and practitioners.Fulvio Maria Palombino is Professor of International Law at the Law Department of theUniversity of Naples Federico II and a member of the Executive Board of the EuropeanSociety of International Law.