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Taxation of foreign investment plays a major role in the relationship between foreign investors and host States. It might be used as an instrument by governments not only to raise revenue but also for the purpose of regulating foreign investment within the respective State. This chapter clarifies the interpretation of investment law standards as far as their impact on tax matters is concerned. Following the conceptual approach of the book this is done via a comparative public law analysis. It looks at a range of selected domestic legal orders worldwide in order to examine the (non-)existence of a representative prevalent praxis as to the scope and form of domestic, i.e., constitutional, limitations on the national tax legislator. The general principles of law concerning the exercise of State tax power vis-à-vis foreign investors extracted from this constitutional comparison are then considered in an international investment law context.

This chapter examines how Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile fared with truth and justice policies after the transition from authoritarian rule, looking at the issue from an institutional and political angle, and at the social politics of memory. Efforts to deal with the past and their significance in the overall politics of transition to democracy are shaped by country-specific historical conditions and developments: the nature and legacies of repression and authoritarian rule; and the nature of the transition process and the various political, institutional and legal factors conditioning the post-transitional period, among which are the nature of repression, the presence and strength of a human rights movement, inherited legal or constitutional limitations, relations between political parties and Human Rights Organizations (HROs), the degree of executive or party commitment to policies of truth and justice, the unity of democratic parties, the ability of the military to mobilise against any policies of accountability as well as their relations with the democratic executive, the attitude of the judiciary to past violations, the presence of a strong legislative right, and the degree to which repression penetrated the social fabric. The way in which the first democratically elected authorities deal with the past, together with the relative strength of the human rights movement in the post-transitional period, sets the agenda for the subsequent evolution of the issue; more specifically, the past remains a source of open conflict if there are loopholes in official policies that preclude full closure or amnesty, and if transnational groups or regional and international human rights bodies challenge national policies favouring impunity. The past also remains a source of conflict if there are strong HROs that continue to contest official decisions on how to deal with the past, and have allies in the formal political arena or the courts. Official policies to deal with the past are not of themselves directly relevant to the process of democratisation, and what is more, during the first transitional period, truth and justice policies are unrelated to (or may even place obstacles in the way of) wider institutional reform; the reverse is also true, but whatever the case, the past becomes part of the dynamic of democratic politics. Indeed, although the continued pursuit of truth and justice and its links to wider reforms may be difficult to establish across the board, the politics of memory more widely conceived are important for a process of democratization in all four countries examined here, as it is about how a society interprets and appropriates its past, in an attempt to mould its future, and as such it is an integral part of any political process, including progress towards deeper democracy.

This chapter tries to develop criteria for constitutional reform, derived from the function and the limits of constitutions. It deals in particular with the interaction and interdependence between constitutional law and political reality and identifies preconditions for the effectiveness of constitutions. Turning to reform, it shows that constitutional amendments are necessary to preserve the effectiveness of the constitution over time. The task of constitutional scholarship is therefore not to prevent constitutional amendments, but to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate amendments.