Supporters of ISDS say it offers a fair and impartial forum for the settlement of disputes between investors and states and, if appropriate, for deciding the amount of compensation an investor should get.
Commissioner Mike Florio brought the request to Administrative Law Judge Melanie Darling, who was supposed to be overseeing the settlement in an impartial manner.
In between, John Cole's journalism encompassed the daily detail of the rise, the decline and the eventual fall of the post-war settlement, viewed from the impartial standpoint – as he put it – of a man with no place in history.
"ICSID provides an important service to states and investors worldwide by offering impartial, cost-effective and efficient facilities for the settlement of international investment disputes, which under the ICSID convention are entirely voluntary and require consent of both the investor and state concerned," he said.
Under the plans, which would form part of the BBC's submission on renewing its Royal Charter, which expires at the end of 2016, the corporation is to commit a fraction of the £3.7bn annual licence fee settlement to hiring 100 local journalists to "provide impartial reporting on councils and public services".
The union, at management's suggestion, recently proposed a settlement of the dispute that has been before baseball's impartial arbitrator, Shyam Das, for five months.
"Certainly a civil settlement could affect a prospective juror's ability to be fair and impartial," said Doug Colbert, a law professor at the University of Maryland and a former public defender.
Georgia has been calling for an impartial investigation, saying it would reveal a Russian military buildup and attacks on Georgian settlements.
The deal was struck after nine hours of negotiations at the Manhattan headquarters of the Major League Baseball Players Association, where baseball's impartial arbitrator, George Nicolau, was standing by to resolve the dispute over Winfield's objections to the trade if a settlement was not worked out.
"The settlement does help the defense's argument that it will be difficult to find a fair and impartial jury in Baltimore," Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University and a former public defender, told The Huffington Post.
The words "independent" and "independence" appear seven times in the Code of Conduct for WTO dispute settlement officials, and the Code's "Governing Principle" begins: "Each person covered by these Rules shall be independent and impartial". Other countries, including China, are taking note.
