FAIR AND EQUITABLE TREATMENT IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

In a panel discussion, several panelists, Rudolf Dolzer of the University of Bonn, Florentino Feliciano, former justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines and former president of the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization, Vaughan Lowe of Oxford University, Howard Mann of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, and Andrea Menaker, chief, NAFTA Arbitration Division, US Department of State, shared their views on fair and equitable treatment in international law. Dolzer said that The central assumption underlying the debate within the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is that a difference exists between a freestanding version of fair and equitable and a version which ties "fair and equitable" to the rules of international law. Lowe said that while lawyers tend to have an approach to notions of fairness and equity that philosophers would find appallingly unsophisticated, there is little merit in trying to fabricate a comprehensive doctrine of fair and equitable treatment in abstracto.