Use this to get more familiar with the Article Citator tool, and how you can use it to see how specific legal instruments relevant to international investment law have been considered by tribunals, annulment committees and reviewing courts.

Navigating in the Article Citator

From the left-hand sidebar, selecting the “Article Citator” option will bring you to a listing of all legal instruments that have been interpreted by tribunals, annulment committees and reviewing courts. The listing will be organized into seven categories:

1. Arbitration Rules: rules of procedure used in investment treaty arbitration.
2. International Treaties & Rules: multilateral instruments that are frequently cited by investment treaty tribunals, annulment committees and reviewing courts that have a broader and more general application to international investment treaty law as a whole (e.g., ICSID Convention, Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, and ILC Articles on State Responsibility).
3. Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs): bilateral agreements between States that protect foreign investors and/or investments.
4. Free Trade Agreement (FTA’s): agreements between two or more States to reduce trade barriers that may include protection of foreign investors and/or investments.
5. NAFTA: North American Free Trade Agreement and related legal instruments between the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
6. Regional/Sectoral Agreements: agreements between States that represent a geographical region or economic sector that may include protection of foreign investors and/or investments.
7. Other: All other legal instruments that do not fall within the foregoing categories that have been subject to application or interpretation by investment treaty arbitration tribunals, annulment committees and reviewing courts.

Article Citator Filters

Use the filters at the top of the listing to view only the categories that you are interested in. Selecting a category will apply it as a filter, and hide all others that are not selected. You will be able to select multiple categories that are relevant to your search. Click the same category again to deselect that option.

Legal Instrument Cards

Each legal instrument will be displayed in a card view. Clicking on the name of the instrument will bring you to the document view of that text, where more information about the instrument will be available. A listing of provisions within this instrument that have been referenced by decisions and awards will be displayed by default. References to specific provisions will be available to select to view the excerpt of the provision text, and general references to the legal instrument as a whole will be listed in addition, in the “All references” section.

How do I see how a specific provision within a legal instrument has been interpreted?

The Article Citator enables you to see how any of the legal instruments listed above, or a particular provision within that instrument, has been applied by tribunals, annulment committees and reviewing courts.

1. Press the “plus” sign beside a legal instrument to see a list of provisions that have been considered by investment treaty tribunals, annulment committees and reviewing courts.
   1. Example: Under the “International Treaties & Rules” header, select the ‘plus’ sign on “ICSID Convention (1965)” to provide you with a list of provisions within the ICSID Convention that have been considered by investment treaty tribunals, annulment committees and reviewing courts. (Note that “Generally” refers to instances where a tribunal/annulment committee/reviewing court refers to a legal instrument in a general sense, not to a specific provision within that instrument. We have only provided a “Generally” reference for certain instruments that are referred to infrequently or are ancillary to investment treaty arbitration – e.g., the Algiers Declarations.)
2. Select “See All” below Article 25, to provide you with a list of decisions and awards that considered Article 25 of the ICSID Convention in reverse chronological order
   See “How can I sort the results and cross-reference them with the Jurisprudence Citator?” to provide you with tips on different ways to sort your results.

   Next to each provision listed, there will be a number in brackets. This refers to the number of decisions and awards that have referred to the provision.

   Note: Each provision and sub-provision receives its own reference in the list of provisions – i.e., if you want to check all references to Article 25 and all references to all subparagraphs within Article 25 (Article 25(1), Article 25(2), Article 25(2)(a), etc.), you must check the result of each one.

3. While looking at the decisions and awards under the selected provision (in this case Article 25) under the document “Ayat Nizar Raja Sumrain and others v. State of Kuwait, ICSID Case No. ARB/19/20, Decision on the Joinder Application, 5 October 2020” there will be a listing of paragraphs under the “Preview excerpt paragraphs” heading. Click on a paragraph number to view the text of the paragraph that references Article 25 of the ICSID Convention.
4. Click “Full Case & Analysis” to view the full text of Ayat Nizar Raja Sumrain and others v. State of Kuwait document, and see other references made within the document.

How to view all jurisprudence that refers to an instrument?

From the legal instrument card select the “See All” option below the label “All References”. This will show a listing of all decisions and awards that refer to the legal instrument generally in addition to the specific provisions outlined above.

How can I sort the results and cross-reference them with the Jurisprudence Citator?

When viewing decisions and awards that refer to a specific provision, you will be able to sort the documents in four different ways: reverse chronological, chronological, number of references, and by most referenced.

• Reverse chronological order: This is the default option. It provides you with a list of decisions and awards that refer to the selected provision, starting with the most recent and ending with the oldest.
• Chronological order: This provides you with a list of decisions and awards that refer to the selected provision, starting with the oldest and ending with the most recent.
• Number of references: This will order the decisions and awards by showing the document with the highest number of references to the provision first and ending with the document with the least number of references.
• Most referenced: This will order the decisions and awards based on the documents most frequently cited by other investment treaty decisions or awards in the Jurisprudence Citator.
  See “Getting Started with the Jurisprudence Citator” to learn more about dispute documents citing decisions and awards.

Note: The frequency with which a particular paragraph or footnote is cited may not indicate its acceptance by subsequent tribunals, annulment committees and reviewing courts; it may also signal divergence in the approaches of different tribunals, annulment committees and reviewing courts.

Also, passages are ranked only where they contain an explicit reference to the provision in question. The Article Citator captures explicit references to provisions (e.g., Article 25 of the ICSID Convention). For example, if paragraph 104 of a decision or award explicitly refers to Article 25, it will be captured in the Article Citator data. If paragraph 105 of the same decision or award elaborates upon Article 25 but does not explicitly refer to it, it may not be captured in the Article Citator data.

What is the scope of the Article Citator?

The Article Citator only produces results where a publicly available decision of an investment treaty tribunal expressly refers to a legal instrument in the context of making findings concerning issues relevant to the investment treaty claim before it.

There are thousands of bilateral investment treaties and free trade agreements with investment protection chapters in force, but the vast majority of them have not yet been the subject of arbitral consideration. Since ISLG’s Article Citator is concerned with the application and interpretation of legal instruments by arbitral tribunals, annulment committees and reviewing courts, it does not include an instrument until it has been applied or interpreted by a tribunal/ annulment committee/reviewing court. If a decision or award is published which interprets a legal instrument relevant to the investment treaty claim before it, that instrument will be incorporated into the Article Citator as part of our data capture process.

To further clarify what types of references fall within the scope of the Article Citator, the following is a list of references that are excluded:

• references to legal instruments found in the tribunal’s summary of the proceeding and the disputing parties’ submissions;
• references to legal instruments considered by tribunals, annulment committees and reviewing courts for the purposes of determining questions of fact or claims outside the scope of an investment treaty claim (e.g., contractual agreements); and
• references to legislation of the host State made in the context of referring to, interpreting or applying national law.

How can I be sure that ISLG has recorded all instances in which a tribunal/annulment committee/reviewing court has cited the jurisprudence in question?

ISLG has a high degree of confidence in its search results. Our data capture process for populating the Article Citator involves a series of reviews performed in accordance with established systems and proprietary protocols. We do not outsource the data capture and the exercise is overseen by qualified persons (all of whom have a legal education or other professional training and experience in investment treaty arbitration) who have undergone training and monitoring according to our protocols. Nothing is uploaded to the site until it has gone through at least two levels of review.

ISLG does not rule out the possibility of a missed reference and cannot represent that there is no possibility whatsoever that this might occur. For that reason, ISLG always recommends that users employ all the Research Tools to maximize their research results.