On Investment Treaty Legal Relation

International investment treaty is the main category of legal sources for international investment law. In this paper, it is pointed out that in the light of international investment treaty, a de facto legal relation of an international-public-law nature has been established between the investor and the host country. Despite of the huge amount of these treaties as they are usually concluded by two or a few countries, they share a similar structure due to a similar aim to achieve. This fact makes the ambition feasible to construct a common investment treaty legal relation. This paper thus tries to carry out the construction firstly, during which a few academic questions will be discussed; and then the radical nature of this kind of legal relation is disclosed through the comparison with two counterparts chosen from the field of international law; following this, the reason why this radical institution was produced and adopted will be analyzed. Consequently, the discussion will be arranged according to the following order:The object of this study, namely the"investment treaty legal relation", is shaped and clarified in the Introduction, where the current situation of relating research is also checked, with some problems being pointed out. Besides, the methodology and the significance of this study are expressed.Part I, Part II and Part III serve for a common goal to construct the investment treaty legal relation, in which: Part I can be deemed as the formation of this kind of legal relation, analyzing the two components, i.e. the legal norms and the legal facts, to be relied on in order to form the investment treaty legal relation. Part II discusses three elements of the legal relation, namely its subject, its content and its subject. Part III focuses on the second legal relation that is derived from the investment treaty legal relation, discussing how to solve a possible investment-related dispute between the investor and the host country, when the investor's rights are allegedly infringed.Adopting a comparative methodology, Part IV aims at highlighting the radical nature of the investment treaty legal relation by comparing it with two counterparts.Part V tries to understand why this kind of radical institution could be produced and adopted, and the current crisis it is confronting.