- Research Fellow
Biography
Paul Barker is a practicing international lawyer and arbitrator, and is a Research Fellow at Stanford Law School’s Gould Center for Conflict Resolution. His research at Stanford focuses on the promotion and protection of foreign direct investment in the renewable energy sector, in the broader context of sustainable energy and climate change policy.
Paul is recognized as a leading barrister (litigator) for public international law (The Legal 500) and international arbitration (Who’s Who Legal: UK Bar) at the English Bar. He is also ranked as one of the leading international arbitration lawyers globally under the age of 45 (Who’s Who Legal: Arbitration – Future Leaders). Paul is described in the legal directories as “an exceptionally gifted and skilled lawyer whose work is of a consistently high quality”, “a seasoned arbitration practitioner with wide knowledge and excellent skills who stands out for his strength on investor-state disputes”, an “excellent team-player”, and as having a “very strong intellect” and “a truly international practice” (The Legal 500; Who’s Who Legal 2019-2021).
Paul has over a decade’s experience across Asia, Europe and the US acting as counsel for governments and corporations in international commercial arbitrations and in investment treaty arbitrations between foreign investors and States, including renewable energy disputes. He also advises on ESG and sustainable finance matters.
Paul has a particularly international practice; he has been resident in London, New York, Paris, and San Francisco, and has worked on a number of arbitrations in Hong Kong and Singapore. He has also represented the UK at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Paul regularly lectures on foreign investment protection and international arbitration at Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School and City University of Hong Kong Law School. He has published on investment treaty arbitration, foreign investment protection, commercial arbitration and international litigation. He was formerly a Visiting Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at Cambridge University.
Paul holds law degrees from Cambridge University and Columbia University Law School in New York. He is a member of the Bars in England, New York, and California.
Paul is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) North America YMG.
Related Organizations
Renewable Energy Investment and International Dispute Settlement
To meet the Paris Agreement aspirational goal to limit post-industrial global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and thereby hopefully avoid the worst effects of climate change, global emissions must reach net zero by around mid-century. This unprecedented transformation of the global economy and societies will require investment in the clean energy transition to more than double to over US $4 trillion annually. Given limited public resources, private investment — backed by government policy support — must provide the lion’s share of funding, particularly in emerging economies. By helping to de-risk climate-friendly projects, well-designed regulation of foreign investment could therefore potentially play an important role in mobilizing the private capital necessary to close this enormous investment gap.
In this context, Paul’s research focuses in particular on the role of the investment treaty system, and whether it could be utilized to help promote investment in the energy transition around the world. The investment treaty system governs the promotion and protection of foreign investment and is ultimately backstopped by investor-State dispute settlement (“ISDS”) under a global network of bilateral investment treaties and free trade agreements. It has already been the forum of many investor-State claims concerning renewable energy policy support and fossil fuel phase outs.
The research is interdisciplinary in approach: it is grounded in a rigorous analysis of the legal frameworks and jurisprudence governing sustainable investment protection and ESG investing, coupled with empirical research into the impact of these rules on the expectations and investment decisions of investors, and the policy decisions of governments.