Home Publications Research Data Research Grants Equipment Inventions & Patents Awards Additional Research Activities Faculties & Institutions Research Areas

Assessing Human Rights Transformation in Investment Governance. Sub-Project: “Varieties of Silence: Human Rights in Investment Arbitration” (EXC 3039)

Third Party Funds Group - Sub project

Acronym: EXC 3039

Start date : 01.10.2026

End date : 30.09.2030

Website: https://www.transforming-human-rights.fau.de/en/research-projects/

---

• Overview

   

Overall project details

Overall project

Cluster of Excellence “Transforming Human Rights“ (EXC 3039) Jan. 1, 2026 - Dec. 31, 2032

Project details

Scientific Abstract

This proposal comprises a Meta-Project and a Sub-Project. The Meta-Project, “Assessing Human Rights Transformation in Investment Governance”, develops a cross-cutting methodological framework for assessing whether, and to what extent, human rights strategies, arguments, protests, and litigation (national and international) generate observable transformation within the international investment law order. It does so across five legal dimensions: discursive, doctrinal, procedural, institutional and reform-oriented, and outcome-based. It convenes FAU and Cluster-affiliated researchers already working on adjacent questions together with external experts working at the intersection of environmental, human rights, climate, and foreign investment law. The Meta-Project aims at developing a theoretical framework that helps to answer the question of what counts as genuine legal human rights transformation as distinct to rhetorical accommodation or doctrinal adaptation. One of its key deliverables will be an edited volume, co-edited by PI Wiater and Post-Doctoral Researcher Vasudev.
The Sub-Project, “Varieties of Silence: Human Rights in Investment Arbitration,” provides an illustrative contribution to the Meta-Project’s methodology. It investigates a structural phenomenon in international investment arbitration: the question of a “silence” of human rights in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), even where the underlying facts engage human-rights-relevant concerns. Conceptualised as “structured silence,” this pattern signals not an absence of human rights relevance, but a patterned absence of explicit human rights argumentation within legal proceedings. The project asks under what conditions human rights arguments emerge, become translated into alternative legal vocabularies, or remain absent in ISDS. The project operationalises the “varieties of silence” through a research project combining directed qualitative content analysis, AI-assisted corpus screening of ISDS decisions and party submissions, and qualitative practitioner interviews.

Involved:

Contributing FAU Organisations:

Funding Source

Research Areas