Approaches to Foreign Direct Investment in Legal Research

The analysis of legal aspects of FDI has led to a veritable boom in scholarship and the emergence of a separate legal discipline at the intersection of international and national, public and private law. Building on a broad understanding of legal approaches to FDI, as encompassing substance and procedure under both national and international law and soft law regulation, the chapter first provides an overview over the architecture of the legal regime governing FDI and argues that FDI regulation is best understood as a transnational legal order. It also analyses the core conceptualizations of the field in legal scholarship and investment law practice and introduces methods for legal research. On this basis, the chapter develops a typology of research questions in international investment law and provides an overview of theoretical approaches to international investment law and methods of legal research.