Mona Pinchis-Paulsen

Mona Pinchis-Paulsen joined the LSE in 2020 as Assistant Professor in International Economic Law. She holds a Ph.D. in International Economic Law from The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London and a LL.M. in International Law from The George Washington University School of Law. Mona teaches and researches in the fields of public international law, international trade law, economic development, and international investment law and arbitration. She is part of the managing editorial team for World Trade Review and is co-chair of a seminar series on International Economic Law & Policy, based in London.

Prior to joining the LSE, Mona was Teaching Fellow for the International Economic Law, Business, and Policy LL.M. Program at Stanford Law School. Before that, she was an Emile Noël Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice, New York University. She has been a visiting lecturer in the law departments at the University of California (Davis) and King’s College London. Mona is a qualified Canadian lawyer and admitted to the bar in Ontario (2007). She has been involved as both an advisor and legal researcher in several international investment treaty disputes and trade disputes arising from subsidisation.

Research interests

Mona’s research broadly focuses on the global economy and its legal structures and institutions. She is interested in doctrinal and interdisciplinary approaches to international trade and foreign investment law and policy, particularly global economic history, the politics of international law, economic diplomacy, and law and empire. Mona also has wider interests in security studies, international development, and global governance.

She is currently completing a monograph (under contract with Oxford University Press) on the ‘fair and equitable treatment’ (FET) treaty standard, the most litigated and most controversial aspect of international investment law. It is based on five years of original archival research in the UK, France, Canada, the US, and Switzerland. In this comprehensive history of FET, Mona explains how this contested nature has been present from its earliest design in international trade and investment treaties. In fact, she shows that FET has always meant many different things to different people, and both state and non-state actors have strategically sought to shape the legal understanding of FET to advance their own particular interests and ideas.

Other research projects include: multilateralism and other processes for global economic governance, dialogue among the academy, domestic stakeholders, and nation states regarding both the creation and subsequent reform of investor-state arbitration, the underappreciated impact of the international development community on the construction of international economic governance institutions, and the rising demand for national security strategies that address the regulation of digital technologies in the global economy.

Articles

• ‘Strengthening Trade Multilateralism and the Equitable Distribution of Critical Supplies in the Wake of Global Emergencies’ World Trade Review, 20 (4) 582-605
• ‘Separating the Political from the Economic: The Russia-Traffic in Transit Panel Report’ WTO Case Law Reports (co-author Pramila Crivelli) World Trade Review, 2021 (forthcoming)
• ‘Trade Multilateralism and U.S. National Security: The Making of the GATT Security Exception,’ 41 Michigan Journal of International Law 109 (2020)
• ‘Resolving Challenges to Historical Research: Developing a Project to Define Fair and Equitable Treatment’ in Rainer Hofmann, Stephan W. Schill, Christian J. Tams, eds. Investment Law & History (Edgar 2018)
• ‘The Ancestry of “Equitable Treatment” in Trade: Lessons from the League of Nations during the Inter-War Period’(2014) 15(1) Journal of World Investment & Trade,13-72

Public engagement

• ‘Thinking Creatively and Learning from COVID-19: How the WTO can Maintain Open Trade on Critical Supplies’ Opinio Juris (Apr. 2, 2020).
• ‘The historical references in the U.S. First Submission in United States-Certain Measures on Steel and Aluminium Products,’ International Economic Law and Policy Blog (Oct. 6, 2019).
• ‘Inconsistencies in Investment Protection Standards’ OGEMID/Transnational Dispute Management (co-authored with Wolfgang Alschner), 2018.
• Submission to Global Affairs Canada: Recommendations for Canada’s Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (co-authored with Inu Manek), 2018.
• ‘Transparency as a First Step for Tomorrow’s Investment Treaties’, Reshaping Trade through Women’s Economic Empowerment: An Essay Series, The International Law Research Program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2018.
• ‘Federal Court of Canada hearing Canada's application to set aside Bilcon NAFTA award’, International Economic Law and Policy Blog (4 February 2018).
• ‘A NAFTA Proposal: Fix the FET Investment Protection Commitment’, International Economic Law and Policy Blog (27 September 2017).
• ‘The Forgotten U.S. Purpose of FET Clauses in Post-War Treaties’, New Thinking on Investment Treaties, Columbia Centre on Sustainable Investment and the Global Economic Governance Programme at Oxford University, 2016.