The Role of Amicus Curiae in International Investment Arbitration

At the present time in the text of many international contracts in which one party is the State and the other party is a foreign private sector, and known as State contracts, and mainly are investment contracts there exists a condition concerned with arbitration as the means of dispute settlement. Therefore, international arbitration has become the most common process for resolving disputes regarding these contracts. Although basically the main regulations of these arbitrations are the international commercial arbitration rules of institutional and ad hoc arbitrations, some developments have been occurred in these rules in recent years due to the presence of the States. The new establishment of "amicus curiae", which is a phenomenon in the court proceedings in some countries, in the system of investment arbitration has been counted as one of the most important developments of the arbitration system. "Amicus curiae" is a third person, other than the parties, to a lawsuit who has an interest in the decision of the court, and request the court or is requested by the court to file a brief in the action. In this article, thus, it has been tried to introduce this phenomenon and to analyze the role it plays in recent investment arbitrations as well as its function.