US energy company TECO Guatemala Holdings, LLC (“TECO”) was awarded additional damages in a resubmitted ICSID claim against the Republic of Guatemala under the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (“DR-CAFTA”).1) TECO Guatemala Holdings, LLC v. Republic of Guatemala (ICSID Case No. ARB/10/23), Award, 13 May 2020. On 13 May 2020, the resubmission Tribunal…

Cruising around investment cases against the Caribbean islands is not only a recreational journey.  It is also an informative one.  This article aims at presenting key observations made during this journey. As mentioned in a previous publication, since 1973, the sovereign islands of the Caribbean Sea, have concluded over 140 international investment agreements.  The ICSID…

In the United States, approval prospects may appear bleak for the Trans-Pacific Partnership  Agreement (“TPP”) – at least at present. The current political climate appears generally negative on trade, and even Vice President Joe Biden stated recently that he saw “less than an even chance” that TPP would be approved before the new U.S. president…

The Office of the United States Trade Representative has issued another update on its long-running dispute with Guatemala over lax protection of worker rights in the latter country. Readers of this blog may recall that the United States initiated a state-to-state arbitration against Guatemala in 2011, invoking for the first time a fast-track arbitration mechanism…

and Humberto Sáenz-Marinero, Sáenz & Asociados A few weeks ago, we read a post on Kluwer Arbitration Blog about El Salvador by Ricardo Cevallos. The title was “El Salvador becomes an anti-arbitration jurisdiction?” According to the post, El Salvador is becoming an anti-arbitration jurisdiction. We respectfully disagree with the author’s conclusion. It is true that,…

A brief history Arbitration has been a part of the laws of El Salvador for more than a hundred years. The Constitution of 1983 clearly states in Article 23 that every citizen of the country has the right to terminate his or her civil or commercial matters through arbitration. July 2002 marked a dramatic change…

It looks like the first state-to-state arbitration under the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) may have fizzled out. In August of 2011, I reported in this space that the United States of America was initiating arbitration against the Republic of Guatemala. The U.S.A. turned to arbitration after determining that Guatemala was failing to enforce…

As described in Part 1 of this post, the mounting debate about investor-state dispute resolution (ISDR) has crescendoed in the current Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. There are at least two “schools” of concern with ISDR, both of them voiced inside and outside the TPP context. Threats to Public Interest Policy For a growing array of…

It looks like The Amazing Kreskin can rest easy. Last August, I tried my hand at forecasting the future, and I’m not sure I brought credit to the field of prognostication. In my earlier blog post, I’d commented on a novel state-to-state arbitration initiated by the United States against the Republic of Guatemala. (The U.S….