This special issue focuses on the opportunities and challenges connected with investment courts. The creation of permanent investment courts was first proposed several decades ago, but it has only recently become likely that these proposals will be implemented. In particular, the European Commission has pushed for a court-like mechanism to resolve investment disputes in various recent trade and investment negotiations. Such a framework was included in some free trade agreements (FTAs) and investment protection agreements (IPAs) the European Union (EU) signed or negotiated with Vietnam, Singapore, Mexico and Canada. While it was shelved long before the publication of this Special Issue, the European Commission had also formally proposed a court system during the negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement with the United States. The issue of a Multilateral Investment Court (MIC) has also been prevalent at the Working Group III proceedings of theUNCITRAL on investor-State dispute settlement reform, attracting scholarly and public attention.Will these developments lead to the creation of permanent investment courts? How will such courts change the future of international investment law? Will they bring about a real institutional change in adjudicatory mechanisms? Will they introduce a 'hybrid' system, which borrows important characteristics from both arbitration and institutional methods of international adjudication? How will the enforcement mechanisms work, and under which rules of ethics will its adjudicators function and exercise their duties? This special issue brings together leading scholars sharing a common interest in investment courts to address these questions.

Autorentext
Günes Ünüvar is a Carlsberg Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow at iCourts, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. He obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Copenhagen, his LL.M. from the Institute for European Studies at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and his LL.B. from Bilkent University, Ankara. He was a visiting scholar at Columbia Law School and a research fellow at Energy Charter Secretariat in Brussels during his doctoral studies. His research interests include international economic law and dispute resolution, international investment law and policy, as well as treaty interpretation. He is also a qualified attorney-at-law, registered to Ankara Bar Association since 2012.
**Joanna Lam is Professor MSO of International Economic Law (IEL) at University of Copenhagen, iCourts. She graduated from Harvard Law School and University of Warsaw (summa cum laude) and holds doctoral and habilitation degrees in legal studies. A former Fulbright Fellow, she completed research visiting stays at Harvard Law School; University of California, Berkeley; UNIDROIT, Rome; and Renmin University, Beijing. She is also affiliated with Kozminski University, Warsaw. Her recent research focuses on new forms of investment dispute resolution, transparency in international arbitration and on the role of China in IEL.
Shai Dothan is an Associate Professor of International and Public Law at the University of Copenhagen Faculty of Law affiliated with iCourts. He received his PhD, LLM, and LLB from Tel Aviv University. Before coming to Copenhagen, Shai was a post doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, the Hebrew University, and Tel Aviv University as well as a fellow at Yale University and the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg.
**

Inhalt
Shai Dothan and Joanna Lam, A Paradigm Shift? Arbitration and Court-Like Mechanisms in Investors' Disputes.- Eleftheria Neframi, Permanent Investment Courts from the Perspective of the EU Legal Order .- Armand de Mestral and Lukas Vanhonnaeker, The North American Experience with Investor-State Arbitration: Does it lead to a Permanent Investment Court?.- Marc Bungenberg and Anna M. Holzer, Potential Enforcement Mechanisms for Decisions of a Multilateral Investment Court.- Güne Ünüvar and Tim Kreft, Impossible Ethics? An Analysis of the Rules on Ethics and Qualifications of Investment Court Judges.