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Eric De Brabandere
There clearly is no dearth in publications dealing with the burgeoning field of international investment law. And one might wonder whether another handbook is needed on the subject. Yet Arnaud de Nanteuil's Droit International de l'investissement has certain features that make the book of particular interest. Notably, it constitutes the first francophone handbook exclusively dedicated to international investment law. Of course, this does not imply that international investment law has until recently been absent in the French-speaking part of the world - quite the contrary. International investment law has attracted much attention in francophone scholarship for many years. Prosper Weil was one of the first scholars to discuss in detail the question of "internationalization" of contracts in his Hague Academy lecture published in 1969,1 and scholars such as Bernard Audit, Geneviève Burdeau, Patrick Juillard, Charles Leben and Brigitte Stern have also written on international investment law in recent years. In France, as elsewhere, investment law has been addressed within the broader framework of international economic law. Yet, in contrast to the availability of several important treatises and handbooks on international investment law in English, no francophone scholar has yet endeavoured to undertake writing a handbook in French.
The second reason why the book under review deserves attention, as the author himself explains (at 5ff.), are the special features of international investment law that transcend the customary public/private law divide that has traditionally operated as a methodological division of legal research and practice in France and elsewhere. Arnaud de Nanteuil notes that because of the presence of both public and private law elements in this field of the law, it evidences a certain "hybridity" and, therefore, does not really fit into the public or private law categories that have traditionally been important in France and elsewhere.
