A future multilateral investment court (MIC) or multilateral appellate mechanism (MAM) will operate on a plurilateral basis, among States that become parties to the tribunal's constitutive instrument and grant it jurisdiction over disputes under their investment treaties. The creation of a MIC or MAM would involve a significant strengthening and centralization of dispute settlement institutions in the investment treaty regime, which is already overly dependent on law-development by adjudicators, reflected in well-established concerns about loss of State control. Thus, a key challenge in designing a MIC or MAM is to incorporate appropriate control mechanisms that will enable State input, without unduly undermining a MIC or MAM's independence. This article analyses control mechanisms in a MIC or MAM, considering a wide range of questions of institutional design. It highlights two fundamental tensions. One is the tension between independence and accountability. The other tension is between procedural multilateralism and substantive bilateralism. While the procedural law in a MIC or MAM will have been multilateralized, the substantive law the tribunal will interpret and apply will remain contained in mostly bilateral investment treaties, controlled by the parties to those agreements. This article addresses the challenges of designing a multilateral tribunal for a regime that lacks multilateral substantive law and contributes to wider debates over striking an appropriate balance between international judicial independence and Member State control.

During comedians’ performances, most of the usual norms around what we should and shouldn't say are, rightly, suspended. Yet there are still some offensive jokes that ought not be told. To mark such jokes out, some comedy nights and venues have adopted an ethic of ‘don't punch down’, ruling out jokes that target the disadvantaged, vulnerable, and oppressed. This article argues that such an ethic threatens to misdirect our attention. I begin by getting clear about the distinctive sense in which some offensive jokes can punch. Rather than focusing on what discriminatory attitudes the joke reports, or conjectures about the true beliefs of the comedians who make the joke and the audiences who laugh, I draw our attention instead to what a joke does. In particular, the crucial question is whether, and how, an offensive joke contributes towards undermining anti-discriminatory norms, or towards reinforcing unjust hierarchies and damaging stereotypes. In order to track the offensive jokes that punch in this sense, I propose two revisions to the ethic of don't punch down. First, that ethic overemphasises the relative position of the comedian as compared to the joked-about party and the direct target of a joke. Instead, our focus should be on what a joke of this kind does, in the context in which it is told. Second, I argue that the joke's audience is a crucial, and often determining, factor in our ethical assessments.

Integrating library instruction into studio art classes can be challenging for art librarians. While some courses have a research component, and thus a clear need for library instruction, many do not, requiring art librarians to creatively engage art students and faculty to demonstrate the value of the library in studio education. One way art librarians can do this is by encouraging students to see the library as a place for artistic inspiration through serendipitous discovery. But how can art librarians foster the idea of the library as a creative place through instruction? From the 1970s to the present day, studies have shown that artists and art students have a marked preference for browsing the stacks as an information seeking strategy. By aligning browsing with chance as an artistic practice and collaborating with studio art professors, art librarians can create dynamic and impactful learning experiences that lead to exciting outcomes in students’ studio courses. One possibility where serendipitous browsing's potential as a learning outcome can be explored is through the creation of book spine poetry, a found poetry technique where books are arranged so their titles create a poem.