For a judge to know the law may seem as obviously desirable as for a cook to know something of food. What goes for judges ought here to go for arbitrators. After all, overwhelmingly, parties choose lawyers as arbitrators in preference to industry or financial experts, for example. Yet say it in Latin and you…

The claim that arbitrators do not speak Esperanto may seem so obvious that it should not be stated at all. The artificial language was conceived in the late nineteenth century by Ludwik Lejzer Samenhof as a simple, neutral language that was not tied to any one culture. People of different national and ethnic groups would…

The current quest for greater diversity in the world of arbitration has focused heavily on the proportion of women as well as different ethnic and cultural groups on arbitral tribunals, boards and committees of arbitral institutions, and, to a lesser extent, acting as lead counsel. Most recently, there have been timely demands to recognize and…

In its decision of 11 June 2020, an ICSID Annulment Committee annulled an award in Eiser and Energia Solar Luxembourg v. Spain, ICSID Case No. ARB/13/36. It did so on the grounds that the arbitrator appointed by the investors, Stanimir Alexandrov, and his former law firm, Sidley Austin, had worked so closely and frequently with…