Enabling Private Ordering - the University of Minnesota Law School

2009] UMBRELLA CLAUSES 97
contract or other specific commitment vis-à-vis foreign investors;
on the other hand, they control whether to abide by their
promises or to escape from them out of opportunism. Nothing
more, but nothing less, than enabling investors to enforce
investment-related promises that host States have made is what
umbrella clauses intend. They therefore impose predictable
consequences and help to hold States accountable for breaches
of promises they made vis-à-vis foreign investors. The clauses
are thus not the Zauberlehrling’s spirits that branch out without
control when they are understood as part of an overarching
framework for enabling and stabilizing private ordering in
investor-State relations, and for enhancing efficient investor-
State cooperation.