The National-Law Layer of Investment Disputes
International investment arbitration, including the ICSID format, is a rare and demanding process whose first qualifying filter is often national law. Before a dispute reaches an international tribunal, it must be established whether the object in dispute is an investment and whether the claimant is an investor within the meaning of the Georgian law on the promotion and guarantees of investment activity. It is precisely this law that shapes the concepts and guarantees forming the initial grid of the tribunal's analysis: the definitions of investment and investor, the legal regime of the foreign investor, the inviolability of investment and the conditions of compensation. The treaty layer stands on the second level of that sequence.