Investor-state arbitration is a fundamentally different regime from the commercial arbitration governed by the Georgian Law on Arbitration. This page explains where the boundary runs: what the scope of that law covers under Article 1, what role is played by the incorporation norm for an agreement on institutional rules set out in Article 2, and why treaty-based (international investment) arbitration does not fall within the framework of this law. We present ICSID as a regime built on international treaties — in a general, institutional description, since the text of those conventions is not found in the Georgian legal corpus examined here and their detailed analysis is a subject of separate study.
The Scope of the Law and Its Boundary (Article 1)
Article 1 provides that the Law on Arbitration establishes the rules for the creation of arbitration, arbitral proceedings and arbitral awards in Georgia, as well as the rules for the recognition and enforcement of awards rendered outside Georgia. Under paragraph 2 of the same article, the arbitration is competent to examine property disputes of a private nature based on the equality of persons, which the parties are able to settle between themselves, and disputes connected with a public-private partnership contract provided for by the Law of Georgia on Public-Private Partnership. The boundary is therefore clear: a dispute between an investor and a state grounded on a treaty — whether a bilateral investment treaty or the Energy Charter Treaty — does not fit these categories. Such a dispute arises not from private law but from a source of international public law, and it is examined within mechanisms created by international treaties.