European Institutions Seminar Series

European Institutions Seminar Series

The current boom of investment arbitration under NAFTA as well as ICSID and other arbitral regimes has demonstrated that the enforcement of treaty obligations has become a standard feature of international law in this particular field of international economic law. The increased probability of actual enforcement of international standards of investment protection is generally welcomed in a system, such as the international legal order, which normally suffers from rather weak enforcement structures. At the same time, the proliferation of investment dispute settlement mechanisms bears its own risks. The concurrent availability of different investment dispute settlement mechanisms may lead to parallel proceedings or to the re-litigation of already decided cases. The CME/Lauder v. Czech Republic arbitrations where the same dispute was arbitrated under two different bilateral investment agreements and the CMS v. Argentina and the LG&E v. Argentina cases where similar issues were addressed demonstrate the inherent danger of a multiplication of procedures if the answers found by different tribunals are contradictory. The proliferation of investment disputes has broader structural implications which need to be addressed in order to secure the viability of this system of international arbitration.

August Reinisch is professor of public international law and European law at the University of Vienna. From 2004 to 2006 he served as Dean for International Relations of the Law School of the University of Vienna. He is also a professional lecturer at the Bologna Center/SAIS of Johns Hopkins University. He currently serves as arbitrator on the In Rem Restitution Panel according to the Austrian General Settlement Fund Law 2001 and as president of an UNCITRAL investment arbitration.

He holds Master's degrees in philosophy (1990) and in law (1988) as well as a doctorate in law (1991) from the University of Vienna and an LL.M. (1989) from NYU Law School. He is admitted to the Bar of New York and Connecticut (since 1990).

Born in 1930, Kurt H. Biedenkopf studied political science at Davidson College, North Carolina, concentrated in law at universities in Munich and Frankfurt, earned his Doctor of Laws in 1958 and received his Master of Law from Georgetown University in 1962. His teaching career began at Ruhr University Bochum in 1963 as Professor of Law and served as Rector from 1967 to 1969. From 1968 to 1970, Professor Biedenkopf chaired the Federal Government Commission on Co-determination and from 1970 to 1973, he was Executive Board member of the Henkel Corporation in Dusseldorf.

Kurt Biedenkopf has held numerous positions in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, including General Secretary (1973-1977), Vice President (1977-1983), and President of North Rhine-Westphalia Regional Association (1977-1987). From 1976 to 1980, and again from 1987-1990, Professor Biedenkopf was a member of the Federal Parliament (Bundestag) and in 1977, he served as Chairman of the Institute for Economic and Social Policy in Bonn. From 1980 to 1988, he was a member of the Regional Parliament (Landtag) of North Rhine-Westphalia. Besides he published several books and was awarded honorary doctorates by Davidson College, Georgetown University and Catholic University by Brussels.

In 1990 during the transitional period to democracy and market economy he was Guest Professor of Law at Leipzig University. In this time he was leading the Christian Democratic Union of Saxony to success in the in the first free election after German unification 1990. Since he has been a member of the Regional Parliament and sworn in as first Minister President of Saxony. His re-election was on October 6, 1994, and once again on September 9, 1999. Since November 1, 1999 (until October 31, 2000), he is President of the Deutscher Bundesrat.

NATO will hold an important summit meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, in November 2002. At this meeting, the current nineteen members will decide whether to invite up to an additional nine states to join the organization. In addition, a number of other issues may be discussed including the Partnership for Peace, the new NATO-Russia Council, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, defense expenditures by members, European defense issues, NATO command structure and the possible delegation of authority to the Secretary General of NATO. Based on interviews with NATO officials, Professor Caldwell will discuss the issues most likely to be discussed at the Prague Summit.

The events of September 11, 2001 have heightened concerns about the potential for terrorist actions involving nuclear or radioactive materials and facilities. Questions about the vulnerability of such materials and facilities have forced governments to implement new security measures at the national level; however, such measures are of limited value in addressing influential factors in play beyond national boundaries. The existing nuclear weapons among states, is insufficient to address this new threat. A new, broader international nuclear security regime needs to be constructed. This regime must also take into account the growing influence of sub-state, trans-national actors. A key element in this new nuclear security regime is the important role international organizations can play in shoring up the weakness of the nation-state in a chaotic, post-Cold War international environment.

Ron Stansfield is current Coordinator of International Programmes at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) in Ottawa. Mr. Stansfield has over a quarter century of experience in international security issues, including non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament. Prior to joining the CNSC in 1991 as Senior Advisor on Non-proliferation, he served as Director Parliamentary Affairs at the Canadian Department of National Defence from 1988-1989. From 1975-1988, he held several positions at the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), including Head of the Conventional and Nuclear Arms Control Section of DFAIT's Defence Relations Division (1986-1988) and diplomatic assignments in the Netherlands (1981-1985) and South Korea (1977-1979). From 1998-2001, Mr. Stansfield was seconded to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna as a Senior Policy Office for nuclear non-proliferation and safeguards issues in the Agency's Office of External Relations and Policy Coordination. Mr. Stansfield is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan and the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.

This research aims at explaining the apparently higher breakdown rate of presidential democracies over parliamentary ones. It shows that the alleged greater negative effect of presidential regimes on democratic breakdown than parliamentary democracies would disappear, not just when military legacy is considered, but also when the effectiveness or power of legislatures is taken into account.

Speaker Bio

Ming Sing is Associate Professor at the Department of Public and Social Administration, City University of Hong Kong. He is a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego (2006-07).

His current research interests are comparing political culture in Asia and institutional engineering in the world. He joined the Asiabarometer Survey Team in 2006 exploring political culture of all Asian societies in relation to democracy He has been doing research on institutional and non-institutional factors shaping global democratic breakdown longitudinally.

He has published on various aspects of democratization in Hong Kong and is the author and editor of three books: Hong Kong's Tortuous Democratization: a Comparative Analysis (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), and Hong Kong Government & Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). His third book (University of Hong Kong, 2007) focuses on the institutional engineering and governance problems in Hong Kong. He has also published articles in Government & Opposition, Democratization, East Asia, China Information, Chinese Law & Government, Journal of Contemporary Asia, International Journal of Public Administration and elsewhere.

The anatomy of a program to develop a first nuclear weapon was analyzed as a precursor to comparison of potential counter-proliferation activities. In this talk we discuss this precursor task. The weapon and path selected for this analysis was covert development of a gun-type fission device using uranium enriched by centrifuge technology. The rationale for this selection is described. The anatomy was developed by identifying and sequencing each task required to ultimately assemble a single working nuclear explosive device and to provide a limited follow-on production capability. Tasks involve acquisition of materials, design and development of components including manufacturing tools and equipment, design and construction of facilities, operation of the facilities, assembly and integration of the components, and test and evaluation of the components and assembled device. Critical aspects of these steps will be discussed in the presentation. For each task the resources required (time, manpower, utilities, feed materials, and equipment) and their associated costs were estimated. These were inserted into standard project management tools. This permitted easy determination of overall costs and program duration as well as establishing a critical program path. The significance of this information and its use in one potential counter-proliferation activity is described as are potential extensions of this process to analysis of other proliferation pathways.

Robert C. Harney is an associate professor of systems engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School and is the Naval Sea Systems Command Chair of Total Ship Systems Engineering (Combat Systems). He received the BS degree in chemistry and physics from Harvey Mudd College in 1971 and the PhD in applied science from the University of California, Davis in 1976. His entire career has been spent in the field of national defense, working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory, and Martin Marietta Corporation before joining the Naval Postgraduate School in 1995. He teaches courses in sensor systems, weapon systems, and systems engineering. His primary research interests are in advanced sensor systems, unconventional weapons of mass destruction, and counter-terrorism.