Balancing property rights and human rights in expropriation

This chapter concentrates on the protection of property rights through expropriation norms and the way the articulation and adjudication of these may impact upon human rights goals. The purpose of this chapter is twofold: firstly to consider whether anti-expropriation norms are a barrier to human rights promotion through their content, application, or even the regulatory chill effects that might flow from expansive indirect takings norms; and secondly, to consider to what extent the development of comprehensive and balanced tests at the interface of potentially conflicting international governance regimes places great responsibility on adjudicators to expand upon the more open-ended norms that typically arise from treaty negotiations. A subsidiary question is whether the traditionally private field of international arbitration is as well suited to perform this function as a more permanent body such as the Appellate Body of the WTO or a body with broad public international law expertise such as the International Court of Justice.