It appears that Germany is having second thoughts about granting to investors the right to sue states for breach of CETA's investment chapter. The provisions in this chapter, among other things, guarantee to investors 'fair and equitable treatment' and compensation in the event of a 'taking' of their investment interest. Arbitration panels of trade and investment law experts resolve disputes by interpreting these vague, constitution-like commitments. These experts typically have regard to only the terms of the investment treaty and their own sense of what they find tolerable. Little else guides them – not other constitutional law, not international environmental law, not even international human rights commitments. They have, of course, no expertise in these sorts of other matters and prefer to keep things that way. This gives arbitrators cover to provide the widest scope of protection to investors as they think appropriate with no accountability to citizens and democratic processes.Though states have signed on to these sorts of commitments, a few of them have expressed dissatisfaction with this investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) process. Australia declared in 2011 that it would no longer include an ISDS mechanism in future treaties in light of the policy constraints that it imposed, including 'its capacity to put health warnings or plain packaging requirements on tobacco products.'That policy changed with the change of government in 2013. South Africa decided in 2010 to suspend negotiation of any future treaties with an ISDS, and began terminating existing treaties while it develops a new model that is more consistent with its constitutional commitment of overcoming the economic disparity associated with the legacy of apartheid.Other states have similar sorts of noise but they cannot complain too loudly for fear that they will be seen to be less welcoming, and thereby less competitive, in attracting new inward investment. Yet the empirical evidence suggests an ambivalent relationship between signing of investment treaties and attracting new inward investment. After all, the principal magnet for new inward investment throughout much of the 1990s and 2000s, Brazil, has signed about ten investment treaties, none of which are in force.Why the spreading dissatisfaction? The ISDS mechanism has provided investors with legal weapons to challenge all variety of state measures that detrimentally affect their rates of return. Disputes may touch on the provision of essential services like water, sewage, and roads or may implicate state policy concerning such things as public health and environmental protection. What is of particular concern to investors, and which the investment rules regime is on the hunt for, are measures that indicate a change of policy resulting in a significant diminution in the value of an investment. States simply are not entitled to change the legal environment without a good excuse – one, that is, that trade and investment lawyers will like. To be sure, some states do behave badly. But this worldwide system, which empowers trade and investment lawyers to preside over disputes concerning major issues of public policy, looks like overkill when a variety of other means are available to resolve such problems.The German change of mind appears to have been precipitated by a consultation with stakeholders in Germany around negotiations for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement that is presently being negotiated between the EU and the US. The consultation process has revealed dissension around the question of investor rights – it is an issue that tends to attract heated disagreement – resulting in a change of policy going forward. This is the sort of consultation that has never really taken place in Canada under any federal administration. It is long overdue. The 1988 free trade election largely ignored investor rights, its supporters even misrepresenting the constitution-like commitments Canada was signing onto. Either negotiators were naïve in thinking these commitments would not come back to bite Canadians or knew what they were doing and believed that it was a good thing to hamstring future governments. Either scenario is disquieting. It is about time that citizens weighed in on such matters.David SchneidermanProfessor of Law, University of Toronto