Members’ area

Guillaume François Larouche

GEM-DIAMOND doctoral fellow

ESR 8 – Technocratic actors as ‘teachers’ of the rule of law: EU technical assistance, capacity-building and other pathways

As a member of GEM-DIAMOND, I am fortunate to enter a world of critical thinking and to join a community of researchers whose purpose is to produce empirical, scientific & data-driven legal research to understand normative tensions caused by mounting dissensus over liberal democracy within the European Union and the rise of alternative models outside its borders.

Host Institutions

The Most Noble Role. The Rule of Law and the Role of Lawyers in the Making of the Multilateral Investment Court

Supervisors

  • Mikael Madsen
  • Jean-Frederic Morin
  • Chloé Brière

Research abstract

Lawyers mobilize the concept of the rule of law to legitimize the way investment dispute settlement is or should be designed. For some, the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) regime based on international arbitration upholds the rule of law by “depoliticizing” investment disputes. For others, ISDS harms the rule of law by conveying a specific vision of international economic relations that is favourable to capital-exporting countries and their multinationals. They also question the independence of arbitrators and they argue that the ISDS regime failed to provide the necessary legal certainty that a regime based on the rule of law should uphold. Many among this latter group called for the reform of ISDS, currently being discussed under the aegis of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law Working Group III on ISDS Reform (UNCITRAL WGIII). In this context, the European Union (EU) has engaged in diplomatic efforts to promote the establishment of a permanent investment court for the settlement of international investment disputes, the so-called Multilateral Investment Court (MIC), as an alternative to ISDS. The EU proposal draws inspiration from the European experience on the development of the rule of law through the Court of Justice of the EU, which has been described as the “international court par excellence.” This dissertation investigates the export process of the EU conception of the rule of law from the European legal field to the investment field. It aims to capture and document the influence of European lawyers on the conception of the rule of law that is actually exported through the EU proposal to establish the MIC. The European lawyers include the legal counsel of European institutions who are in charge of promoting the establishment of a permanent investment court as an alternative to ISDS. They also include legal scholars and experts, as well as private-practice investment arbitrators and lawyers based in Europe, who are interested in the work of the UNCITRAL WGIII. This dissertation mobilizes Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory to conceptualize the export process as a competition among European lawyers to influence the conception of the rule of law that is promoted as part of the EU proposal to establish the MIC. This dissertation postulates that while European lawyers belong to the European legal field and share a common knowledge of the European legal culture, they are not forming one epistemic community promoting the same conception of the rule of law in the context of the deliberations over the EU proposal to establish the MIC. Rather, this dissertation argues that European lawyers struggle to influence the EU export process of the rule of law with competing conceptions of the rule of law that are informed by their own interests, priorities, and analyses.

Research Question(s)

How do European lawyers influence the export process of the rule of law outside Europe?
Guillaume François Larouche is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Fellow within the Horizon Europe GEM-DIAMOND project and a SSHRC Nelson Mandela Scholar. He is currently conducting a joint PhD in European Law and International Studies at University of Copenhagen (iCourts), Université Laval (ESEI), and Université libre de Bruxelles (Institut d'études européennes/ Centre de droit européen). He works under the supervision of Prof. Mikael Rask Madsen, Prof. Jean-Frédéric Morin, and Prof. Chloé Brière.

His PhD dissertation explores the role of EU lawyers in the making of the proposed permanent investment court. His research is located at the intersection of sociolegal and critical legal studies. He mobilizes empirical methods, including participant observations and semi-structured interviews, to capture the professional strategies and argumentative practices deployed by EU lawyers in and around United Nations Commission on International Trade Law Working Group III on possible ISDS reform.

An affiliated PhD researcher at Canada Research Chair in International Political Economy (Université Laval) and Centre de recherche en droit public (Université de Montréal), Guillaume François holds a Master of Laws (LLM) with Concentration in International Trade and Foreign Investment from the University of Ottawa (for which he received the mention “Excellent”), a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from Université Laval, and an advanced certificate in French and European Law from Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas.

He is a member of the Barreau du Québec since January 2020 and practiced public and constitutional law in Montréal.

Besides his research interests, Guillaume François is interested in history, visual arts, French literature, travel, outdoor activities, and sports (swimming, running, cycling, yoga, and cross-country skiing).
Collection of Essays

Alschner, Wolfgang and Guillaume François Larouche, “Policy trends and options for the future relationship between international tax and investment law” in Robert Danon, Sebastian Wuschka and Andreas R. Ziegler, eds, Tax Issues in International Investment Arbitration (Lausanne: Kluwer Law, forthcoming 2024).

Larouche, Guillaume François and Anne Lise Kjær, “Situated (Legal) Knowledge” in Ramona Coman, David Paternotte, and Frederik Ponjaert, eds, Impact and Social Sciences: A Conceptual Index (forthcoming 2025).

Larouche, Guillaume François, “European Integration and the Rule of Law as a Social Capital: The European Proposal to Establish a Multilateral Investment Court as an Alternative to Investor-State Arbitration” in Ramona Coman, Nicolas Levrat, and Frederik Ponjaert, eds, GEM DIAMOND Edited Volume, Globalisation, Europe, and Multilateralism Book Series (Routledge, forthcoming 2025).

Legal Journals

Larouche, Guillaume François, “Capturing the changing meaning of norms when they are challenged: a proposed turn to practice” [forthcoming].

Larouche, Guillaume François, “International Economic Law and Peremptory Norms. The Norm Against Corruption, a Manifestation of a (Quasi) Jus Cogens?” [forthcoming].

Larouche, Guillaume François, “Language and legal discourse at the confluence of international arbitration and the domestic judiciary” [forthcoming].

Academic Conferences

Larouche, Guillaume François. 2023. “L’intégration européenne et l’État de droit comme capital social : Les juristes européens et la proposition européenne d’un Tribunal multilatéral des investissements”, presented at the 3rd Colloque interdisciplinaire d’études internationales, École supérieure d’études internationales, Université Laval, Québec City, 17 November 2023.

Larouche, Guillaume François. 2023. “European Integration and the Rule of Law as Social Capital: The European Proposal for a Multilateral Investment Court”, presented at the Beyond European legal Integration Workshop, University of Oslo, 9 November 2023.

Larouche, Guillaume François. 2023. “European Lawyers and the Making of the Proposed Multilateral Investment Court: A Legal Ethnography”, presented at the PhD Symposium of the European Union in International Affairs Conference, Brussels, 3 May 2023 [unpublished].

Larouche, Guillaume François. 2023. “International Courts (Trans)formations: The Role of European Lawyers in the ‘Fabrique’ of the International Criminal Court and the Proposed Multilateral Investment Court”, presented at the First GEM DIAMOND Annual Conference, Brussels, 14 March 2023 [unpublished].

Larouche, Guillaume François, “International Economic Law and Peremptory Norms. The Norm Against Corruption, a Manifestation of a (Quasi) Jus Cogens?”, presented at the Edinburgh Postgraduate Law Conference (EPLC) 2022 (Edinburgh), 16 June 2022 [unpublished].

Larouche, Guillaume François, “Adapting the WTO Legal Paradigm on ‘Like’ Products to Include Environmental Considerations: Towards a Green World Trade Organization”, presented at the 15th Annual McGill Law Graduate Conference (Montréal), 5 May 2022 [unpublished].