Increasing  international investment, the proliferation of Bi- and Multilateral Investment Treaties, national investment promotion legislation, and "internationalised" investment contracts have contributed to the rapid development of a new field of international law that defines obligations between "host States" and foreign investors and creates procedures for resolving related disputes, e.g. through the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

These investment disputes involve not only vast sums, but also probe the panoply of rights, duties, and shifting objectives at the juncture of national and international law and policy. Through the FDI Moot law students, future practitioners, academics and policy makers  may attain a practical understanding of these issues. At the same time, the case and the hearings offer a forum of different dynamics for current academics and practitioners from the around the world to discuss the latest developments - and assess emerging talents - in these fields.

The FDI Moot involves a hypothetical case in connection with an investment by a private investor in a foreign host state. The FDI Moot spans a period of approximately six months each year and has two phases: the writing of memoranda for claimant and respondent and the hearing of oral argument based upon the memoranda.

Several institutions have  come together to establish the FDI Moot as a new international moot court competition focusing on investor-State disputes, inter alia

Center for International Legal Studies, Salzburg, Austria

Suffolk University Law School, Boston, Massachusetts

Pepperdine University Law School, Malibu, California

Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law, University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland

German Institution of Arbitration (DIS), Frankfurt/Cologne, Germany.