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The popularity of arbitration as a mechanism for settling disputes between transnational contracting parties has led to standardization in many areas of arbitration law and procedure. One important aspect of the arbitral process, however, the practice of awarding compensatory interest, has been left behind in the march toward uniformity. To date, arbitral tribunals have failed to adopt a rational and uniform approach for evaluating interest claims. Consequently, resolving interest claims is often an expensive and time-consuming process, fraught with uncertainty, which typically results in inconsistent arbitral awards. This result is particularly problematic in the international arbitral arena: such claims often involve millions of dollars, and because a lengthy period may elapse between the origin of the dispute and the final award, whether an arbitrator awards interest may be as significant, from a monetary standpoint, as the principal claim itself.

The procedural aspects of international arbitration have largely been neglected. Tribunals are prone to borrow their rules of procedure from one another without considering their suitability for the particular arbitration at hand. Time rarely permits then to act otherwise in the hurry and pressure attendant upon the opening of an arbitration. Agents and counsel are anxiously preparing their cases and awaiting the opening of oral arguments. During the course of the arbitration the ever-nearing date fixed for its completion, the mounting expense of maintaining the staffs, and the burdens of other official duties awaiting the arbitrators and advocates upon the completion of their tasks all tend to discourage the deliberate consideration of procedural problems.Though the need for procedural reform was long ago recognized, the problem has received relatively little attention from writers.

"Nach der jüngsten Prognose der Vereinten Nationen wird die Weltbevölkerung bis zum Jahr 2050 auf etwa 9,4 Milliarden anwachsen (mittlere Variante) und frühestens bei der Elf-Milliarden-Marge in ein natürliches Gleichgewicht geraten. Doch schon heute, bei einer Weltbevölkerung von nur 6,1 Milliarden, ist das Wasser in vielen Teilen der Welt bereits knapp und teilweise erheblich verschmutzt. Rund 1,1 Milliarden Menschen haben keinen Zugang zu sauberem Wasser, 2,4 Milliarden müssen ohne angemessene sanitäre Anlagen auskommen, mehr als drei Milliarden Menschen sind von wasserbedingten Krankheiten betroffen. Aus all diesen Gründen ist es höchste Zeit, über eine global angelegte Wasserstrategie nachzudenken, die in den kommenden Jahren konkretisiert und umgesetzt werden sollte. Eine solche Wasserstrategie muß sich nicht nur den Einschränkungen widmen, die der natürliche Wasserkreislauf selbst setzt, sondern auch und besonders jenen, die sich aus der rasch wachsenden Wassernachfrage von Haushalten, Industrie und Landwirtschaft ergeben, die aus der Belastung und Degradation der Böden, der chemischen Wasserverschmutzung, durch Überschwemmung und Dürre und durch Interessenunterschiede in den grenzüberschreitenden Wassereinzugsgebieten entstehen." (Autorenreferat)

AbstractThis article offers a brief review of the forces that have contributed to the contemporary impasse in the formation of new international law and institutions. It identifies areas where development of the law of armed conflict would provide great benefits, yet where current international conditions render formal legal agreements highly unlikely. It then considers how to advance desirable projects nonetheless. In the absence of effective formal international law-making, jurists face a choice. One approach, which I call inspirational, is to propose idealized legal systems based on claims of justice and practicality. Much published work over the last decade seems to take this path. The hope is that the ideas will inspire and thus lead relevant actors to adopt the systems at a time when the obstacles to international agreements recede. The other approach, which I call entrepreneurial and describe here, involves leading States acting as "norm entrepreneurs". They can propound and in practice adhere to norms with the intention of inducing other States to follow. The entrepreneurial approach entails a State engaging in a practice that it hopes others will emulate, while the inspirational involves an appeal to the international community as a whole, including significant non-State actors.

A decade ago, trade and investment liberalization dominated the global economic policy agenda. The World Trade Organization (WTO) had recently been created, the United States, Mexico and Canada were implementing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and much of Southeast Asia and South America were near the peak of an economic boom that was driven in part by greater openness to inflows of foreign capital. In bilateral and multilateral discussions of economic integration, global migration was often missing from the docket entirely. The growth in labor flows from low-income to high-income countries has not been greeted with universal enthusiasm, either by policy makers or academics. In theory, international migration increases economic efficiency by shifting labor from low-productivity to high-productivity environments. As workers move from Central America to the United States, North Africa to Europe, or Southeast Asia to Australia, the global labor supply shifts from labor abundant to labor-scarce economies, compressing international differences in factor prices and raising global gross domestic product (GDP). Migrants enjoy large income gains family members at home share in these gains through remittances, and non-migrating workers in the sending country enjoy higher wages thanks to a drop in local labor supply (Aydemir and Borjas, 2007).