The Multiple Forms of Transparency in International Investment Arbitration: Their Implications, and Their Limits

This chapter explores transparency in international investment arbitration. In the field of international investment arbitration, there has been a particularly concerted campaign for the publication of awards and other arbitral documents, for the opening of arbitral hearings to the public, and for the participation of a more diverse group of stakeholders in arbitral proceedings. In isolation, each of these strands of the campaign for greater transparency in international investment arbitration might be characterized as a reform effort focused on a series of technical changes to aspects of the international arbitral process. However, they could alternatively be viewed from a broader angle, insofar as collectively they articulate and are driven by more fundamental concerns about international investment arbitration. Seen from this broader perspective, the campaign for greater transparency in international investment arbitration is underpinned by differing perspectives on the structure of transparency, on its role in the international arbitral process, and on the subjects and stakeholders which it might benefit. Reforms to transparency in international investment arbitration are thus both technically narrow and strategically broad.