Stratos Pahis

YouTube video by Business Scholarship Podcast Business Scholarship Podcast - Ep.270 – Stratos Pahis on Investor-State Dispute Resolution |

Do treaties matter in settling international investment disputes?

@stratospahis.bsky.social, associate professor of law at @brooklynlawschool.bsky.social, joins @busscholarship.bsky.social to discuss his article "Are Investment Treaties Redundant? Evidence from Investor-State Disputes." 1/2

The paper is available here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Stratos Pahis on Investor-State Dispute Resolution Podcast Episode · Business Scholarship Podcast · 01/22/2026 · 25m

The podcast is available here:
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/2sPn...
YouTube: youtu.be/CRliAoMvb-U?...
Direct: andrewkjennings.com/2026/01/22/s...

Investment treaties are the international agreements scholars love to hate. But do they really matter? Thanks so much to @andrewkjennings.com and @busscholarship.bsky.social for having me on to discuss my paper: "Are Investment Treaties Redundant? Evidence from Investor-State Disputes, ICSID Rev

YouTube video by Business Scholarship Podcast Business Scholarship Podcast - Ep.270 – Stratos Pahis on Investor-State Dispute Resolution |

First was a great conversation with @stratospahis.bsky.social on a nuanced view of investor-state dispute resolution on the @busscholarship.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRli... (2/6)

If it’s ham and Swiss, you must dismiss

The charge was baloney

Trump has other tariff options if the Supreme Court strikes down his worldwide import taxes President Donald Trump has warned that the Supreme Court will leave the United States “defenseless’’ and possibly “reduced to almost Third World status’’ if it strikes down the tariffs he imposed this...

What options does Trump have if the Supreme Court rules against his emergency tariffs (as after yesterday's arguments seems likely)? I spoke to the The Associated Press about them here: apnews.com/article/tari...

The fact that the administration chose tariffs instead of those other more effective means of restricting imports shows that revenue generation is in fact major purpose of the tariffs. Common sense and the President’s own statements lead to the same conclusion.

In any event, if the goal was actually to stop all imports--as the Solicitor General suggested--then quotas or blockades would be a much more effective tool.

That argument strikes me as very weak and almost self-rebutting. The expected revenue from the tariffs is $2 trillion over the next decade. To call that revenue "incidental" is absurd.

The SG also repeated more than once that the way you could tell these are “regulatory tariffs” is that they would be most effective in reaching their goals if no one ever paid the tariff (meaning they led to a complete halt to imports).

This argument is key to the government's case that IEEPA's language "regulate...importation" authorizes the tariffs here and that they pass constitutional muster.

The Solicitor General emphasized over and over that the IEEPA tariffs are “regulatory tariffs” not “revenue raising” tariffs, and that any revenue was merely incidental to the tariffs.

A majority of justices on the Supreme Court seemed skeptical of the legality of the IEEPA tariffs during oral arguments today. But I was surprised that one of the government's key arguments wasn't subject to more scrutiny.

But yes of course if any former/current USTR folks want to speak on or off the the record, please DM me!

Yes - I have had some helpful off the record conversations so far have confirmed the theory - not quite sure what to do with that in the paper though, since it's not quite scientific and in any event the paper obviously takes a different methodology...

Very helpful to think through this - thank you - and more comments very much welcome!

But ultimately I think defiance would have actually threatened greater and more permanent damage to the institution by undermining its legitimacy - which (unlike appointments) is not something that can't be restarted on a dime.

As far as defying being a less forceful, I'm not sure I agree. Perhaps more spectacular, yes...

But perhaps the US saw refusing to participate as a bridge too far - if so then the question becomes why?  And I think that just brings us back to why would the US view the process as so important...

Yes - thank you - that is a great point that is worth unraveling.  As I envisioned it, at least in its most extreme form, defiance would have included refusing to participate in AB proceedings, which would have made it no less costly than objecting to AB appointments.

Many thanks to @harlangcohen.bsky.social, @aratojulian.bsky.social Gregory Shaffer, Petros Mavroidis for their comments.

More comments very welcome!

Paper is available here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I close by drawing on those insights to offer three strategies for enhancing the resilience of our international institutions during this era of great upheaval, and for, perhaps, reviving WTO dispute settlement in the next.

I then tease out various lessons from this account for international law and international trade law, including:

✅ The power and limitations of international law,

✅ The complementary nature of international legal theories,

✅ And the productive and destructive force of legal formalism.

I examine how this highly formalistic culture may have been nurtured by international law generally and WTO law specifically, including by its rules on procedure, remedies, and membership.

✅ And Constructivism suggests that the reason the US made that remarkable judgment was that WTO members had been acculturated to value formal compliance with the rules of the game more than the cooperative diplomacy that stands behind them.

✅ Regime Theory suggests that the US chose its method of attack because it judged it would suffer fewer reputational costs from destroying the Body than from ignoring its decisions.

✅ Realism and Liberalism suggest that the US attacked the Body because domestic, international, and legal developments made the US’s compliance with Appellate Body decisions untenable—politically and geopolitically.

Here is the story that International legal theory tells: