What role do stereotypes play in the development of the relationship between human rights and investment law?
That is what Dorothéa Endres explores in her new article "The human side of protecting foreign investment".
Dorothea Endres demonstrates that international human rights law not only protects from discrimination based on stereotypes but also creates and reiterates stereotypes. These stereotypes may entrench differences between communities but also bear potential for new convergences. She elaborates this with respect to the integration of human rights elements into the regulation of foreign investment. She argues that we need to focus on the humans producing the transnational legal discourse and the process of normalisation of those humans. This directs the perspective away from confrontational judicial law-making to the potentially more collaborative setting of treaty-making. Ultimately, she argues that the focus on the human side of protecting foreign investment bears the potential to destabilise stereotypes that hinder possible convergences of human rights and investment community.
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Dorothea Endres is a Research Assistant at the Global Governance Centre for the The Paths of International Law - Stability and Change in the International Legal Order. She studied for a Bachelor degree in Law at the University of Lucerne, and for a Master’s degree in International and European Law at the University of Geneva and the Graduate Institute of Geneva. She holds the Lucerne Bar Exam (Anwaltspatent des Kantons Luzern). Currently, she researches on the role of multinational corporations in the international legal order. She has a background in human rights law and legal sociology.