Bjorklund Quoted in Investment Treaty News on Argentine Arbitration

Professor of Law Andrea K. Bjorklund, was quoted in Investment Treaty News, "Arbitration Watch," on a recent development for the Argentine Government in which the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) annulment committee overturned a portion of an adverse arbitration ruling, while holding that it lacks the power to overturn certain other portions of that award which the committee found to contain significant legal errors.

The annulment decision follows a long-running case in which CMS, a US-based energy firm, turned to ICSID in 2003, alleging that various Argentine actions taken during and after that country's financial crisis served to violate the terms of the US-Argentine BIT. CMS was the first of dozens of foreign investors to file for arbitration following Argentina's financial crisis.

In the article, Bjorklund told ITN that the CMS annulment ruling may give "greater currency" to a separate treaty-based defense of necessity in other Argentine financial crisis arbitrations.

At UC Davis School of Law, Bjorklund teaches international arbitration and litigation, international trade, conflict of laws, and contracts. Before starting at UC Davis, she spent two years as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School. From 1999-2001, Bjorklund was an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, where she defended the United States in investor-State arbitrations brought under Chapter Eleven of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Bjorklund has also served as Senior Counsel to Commissioner Thelma J. Askey at the U.S. International Trade Commission, and has worked in the international group at Miller & Chevalier, Chartered, in Washington, D.C.

Investment Treaty News/October 15, 2007