There’s a story told of Abraham Lincoln who, during his days as a working lawyer, was riding in a stagecoach from one rural courthouse to another. His companions got to discussing human anatomy, and one of them asked Lincoln, a distinctly tall man himself, how long he thought a man’s legs should be. Long enough,…

On 23 February 2021, the Rising Arbitrators Initiative (RAI) and HK45 co-hosted the third installment of the webinar series The Rising Arbitrator’s Challenge: Navigating the Promise and Perils of Your First Appointments. As the webinar series aims to shed light on different jurisdictions, the third installment focused on Asia. The overarching topic addressed the thorny…

The pandemic did not prevent French courts from bringing their share of arbitration-related developments, although they remained almost inactive from March to June. This post succinctly reviews some of 2020’s noteworthy developments.   Important Decisions of the Paris Court of Appeal’s International Section Operational since March 2018, the International Chamber of the Paris court of…

After introduction by the French Arbitration Committee’s (Comité Français de l’Arbitrage or “CFA”) President, Mr. Laurent Jaeger, Mr. Yves Derains started his speech on “The Professionalism of the Arbitrator” by saying that arbitration has become the natural way to resolve international disputes.1) This note was based on Mr. Yves Derains’ speech at the 10 October 2018 Conference of the French…

Arbitration is one of the preferred modes of private dispute settlement. Off its several traits, the cornerstone is the fact that it is based primarily on party autonomy and enables the parties to control almost all aspect of it. On the other hand, States put in place a different review and/or control mechanism on the…

The afternoon session at ICCA Sydney Conference 2018 on “Party Autonomy in Choosing Decision-Makers” was moderated by Prof. Dr. Gabrielle Kaufmann-Kohler and had the insightful contributions of Alfonso Gómez-Acebo, Audley Sheppard QC, Natalie Y. Morris-Sharma and Ruth Stackpool-Moore. The session commenced with Prof. Dr. Kaufmann-Kohler underscoring the importance of maintaining party autonomy in international arbitration….

The 29th Annual Workshop of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (“ITA”), which took place on 14-15 June 2017 in Dallas, focused on a timely subject of much importance to the future of international arbitration, namely, the “Challenges to the Legitimacy of International Arbitration.” The event was co-chaired by Caline Mouawad (King & Spalding), Jeremy K….

(a.k.a why is it always Bill?) To those unfamiliar with this popular Hasbro™ family game, each team has a board with 24 faces on it – the faces vary in colour, shape, gender, facial hair and attire. In the conventional game each side ‘picks their person’ and the other player has to whittle down the…

Back in 2010, an arbitral tribunal composed by Luis Ramallo García (chairman), Miguel Temboury and Santiago Gastón ordered Puma to pay € 98 million to Estudio 2000 for the wrongful termination of their distribution contract. Notably, Mr. Gastón – appointed by Puma – did not sign the award. It was later revealed that he was…

One of the main advantages of arbitration vis-à-vis state court litigation, is that the parties are free to choose independent and highly specialised experts to decide their cases. Yet, if these experts negligently (or even deliberately) violate the duties that come with the acceptance of the appointment, the issue of liability arises. One may think…

The recent annulment decision in Tza Yap Shum v. Peru (ICSID Case No. ARB/07/6) has brought back the discussion regarding the ‘pure’ adversarial nature of investor-state arbitration system. Mr. Shum, a Chinese investor claimed indirect expropriation under the Agreement on Promotion and Reciprocal Protection of Investments (APPRI) between the Governments of Peru and China arising…

Co-Authored with Patricia Živković (Assistant Editor for Europe) On July 18, 2014, the arbitral tribunal (“Tribunal”) rendered final awards (“Award”) in three cases brought by former shareholders of OAO Yukos Oil Company (“Yukos”). As already well known, the Tribunal unanimously decided that the Russian Federation had breached Article 13(1) of the Energy Charter Treaty by…