State responsibility for breaches of investment contracts

It is no longer myth or theoretical fantasy1. Within recognized limits, investment contracts signed between states and foreign investors are regulated by public international law. Although this is now a universally acknowledged truth, treatification of foreign investment protection law tends to obscure the distinct international law principles that regulate state responsibility for breach of investment contracts2. In a monograph based on her PhD thesis titled State Responsibility for Breaches of Investment Contracts, Jean Ho aims to draw our attention to this fundamental scholarly gap (at 2). Her overriding task is to show that international law on state responsibility for breach of investment contracts no longer exists ‘only in the imaginings of writers partial to its creation’3 but in distinctively identifiable sources, contents, and characteristics (at 6).