Description: Can states adopt protectionist cultural policies? What are the limits, if any, to state intervention in cultural matters? A wide variety of cultural policies may interfere with foreign investments, and a tension therefore exists between the cultural policies of the host state and investment treaty provisions. In some cases, foreign investors have claimed that cultural policies have negatively affected their investments, thereby amounting to a breach of the relevant investment treaty. This study maps the relevant investor-state arbitrations concerning cultural elements and shows that arbitrators have increasingly taken cultural concerns into consideration in deciding cases brought before them, eventually contributing to the coalescence of general principles of law demanding the protection of cultural heritage.
Brief description: Valentina Vadi is an Associate Professor in International Economic Law at Lancaster University. She was previously an Emile Noël Fellow at the Jean Monnet Centre for International and Regional Economic Law, New York University, and a Marie Curie Fellow at Maastricht University. Her main areas of research are in international economic law and international cultural law.
Review Quotes: 'Aside from the wealth of information as well as the quality of its analysis, the book of Professor Vadi covers a gap in the relevant literature. Indeed, apart from a limited number of studies focusing on aspects of the relation between cultural heritage and international investment law, there has been no in-depth study, and the book remains the sole comprehensive contribution to the subject.' Panayotis M. Protopsaltis, Journal of International Arbitration