Recently, several court-like mechanisms have been considered as a substitute for investor-state arbitration. Suggestions for creating such mechanisms have been around for a long time, but new trade agreements may make court-like mechanisms for investors’ disputes a reality. This paper starts by asking whether the shift from arbitration to court-like mechanism is likely to happen and how deep is the change to dispute resolution going to be. The advantages and disadvantages of replacing ad-hoc arbitrators with court-like mechanisms are examined. Courts are more centralized than arbitrators, which gives them the ability to act in a coherent way and consider long-term consequences. However, centralization may imply a greater risk of capture by special interests and could lead to more radical legal developments than the stable system of diverse arbitration. Furthermore, compromise solutions that create numerous competing court-like mechanisms instead of a universal court may escalate the fragmentation of international law.