Param Bhalerao

Institution: University of Vienna

Period of stay: 28 September - 11 December 2026

Contact: param.bhalerao@univie.ac.at

https://eur-int-comp-law.univie.ac.at/team/bhalerao-param/

Profile: 

Param Bhalerao is an Ars Iuris uni:doc scholar at the Department of European, International and Comparative Law of the University of Vienna. His doctoral thesis (in progress) is on circumstances precluding wrongfulness in international investment law. At the University of Vienna, Param works with Prof. August Reinisch and assists him on various academic matters pertaining to international law, including with his work as the Austrian member to the UN International Law Commission.

In addition, Param is an independent, common-law qualified international disputes lawyer with experience in commercial and investment-treaty arbitration and sanctions advisory. He has served as counsel and tribunal secretary in arbitration proceedings governed by ICC, ICSID, LCIA, SIAC, UNCITRAL, Swiss Rules, DIS, CIMA, DIAC, and ad-hoc rules, involving the applicable laws of various common and civil legal systems.

Research Area:

International Investment Law

Research Title:

Circumstances Precluding Wrongfulness in International Investment Law

Research Outline:

International investment law is a specialized treaty regime that grants investors standing to bring claims directly against host States for breaches of investment treaty obligations. The fundamental nature of investors’ rights may be understood as independent and substantive, vested rights of their own, granted by virtue of being the beneficiary of the relevant investment treaty, and giving rise to a legal relationship between the investor and the host State in which the ordinary framework of inter-State responsibility is not directly engaged. This dissertation argues that, where investors are understood as direct right-holders, the circumstances precluding wrongfulness under Chapter V of the International Law Commission Articles on State Responsibility may not necessarily be suitable for the investor-State relationship, since those rules are apply between full subjects of international law having international legal personality. Instead, drawing on the analogy of investors as third-party beneficiaries of an inter-State agreement, this dissertation proposes to identify the relevant principles governing preclusion of wrongfulness through a comparative analysis of contract law across representative legal systems, with a view to deriving general principles of law applicable to the investor-State relationship.

Publications:

P. Bhalerao, “The Standard of Due Diligence for Reviewing Domestic Court Decisions”, Conference on Investment Protection and Domestic Courts (upcoming).

P. Bhalerao, “Constructing Investors’ Substantive Rights in International Investment Law”, Vienna Law Review (upcoming).

P. Bhalerao “Sanctions and Take-or-Pay LNG Supply Agreements”, Transnational Dispute Management, Vol. 21 (4) (Nov. 2024).

P. Bhalerao, “Jurisdiction Ratione Materiae in The Chagos Archipelago Arbitration’, Gujarat National University Arbitration Law Review, Inaugural Special Edition (Mar. 2024).

F. Stirnimann, P. Bhalerao, et al., “Practice note, Enforcing arbitration awards in Switzerland”, Practical Law, Thomson Reuters (Nov. 2022).

P. Bhalerao, ‘ADR and Sport in India’, Global Sports Law and Taxation Reports, Vol. 7(3) (Sep. 2016)

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