Author
Ms Wang Ruojing
Organisation/Institution
Zhejiang University Guanghua Law School
Country
CHINA
Panel
International Investment Law
Title
Empowerment or Domestication? Testing Legal Hegemony in Asian Investment Arbitration
Abstract
International investment law confronts a persistent paradox: treaty texts have grown progressively “greener”, yet states continue to face substantial liability when enacting bona fide public-interest regulation. Existing critiques document structural bias and regulatory chill, but they leave a gap: they do not explain how tribunals rhetorically embrace state concerns while simultaneously stripping those concerns of operative force. This paper addresses that gap by developing a two-part account of legal hegemony. The first part maps the regime’s static architecture: its doctrinal, institutional, and ideological toolkit. The second part theorizes the regime’s dynamic practice through the concept of hegemonic domestication (HD), a repeatable recognition–neutralization sequence in which a tribunal’s rhetorical recognition of public-policy aims is immediately followed by doctrinal neutralization that commodifies sovereign acts into compensable risks. Methodologically, the paper employs a non-intentionalist, Skinnerian speech-act reading supplemented by triagulated evidence (party filings, non-party materials, and award text). To test the framework in an Asian context, the paper substitutes Eco Oro with the landmark Tethyan Copper v. Pakistan (Reko Diq) arbitration. The Reko Diq record, comprising a provincial denial and a domestic court ruling later met by an ICSID finding of breach and multi-billion-dollar compensation, permits a clear five-step microanalysis of HD’s mechanics and of how this process reproduces investor-primacy across jurisdictions. The paper thus contributes to debates on law and sustainability by showing how doctrinal practice, institutional form, and legitimating rhetoric together shape substantive environmental governance across Asia.
Biography
Wang Ruojing is a PhD candidate from Zhejiang University, Guanghua Law School, whose main research areas are international investment law, international environmental law, and legal theory. She has authored work on issues such as the procedural application of the precautionary principle in ISDS and the discursive mechanisms of legal hegemony in investment treaty arbitration. She has received several academic honors for her research, including outstanding paper awards from national forums on international investment arbitration and international economic law.
