In February 2024, a new arbitration centre was inaugurated in Abu Dhabi.  The Abu Dhabi International Arbitration Centre, known as arbitrateAD (“Centre”) launched as an independent and neutral forum for dispute resolution.  Aligning with established domestic, regional, and global best practices, the Centre aims to position Abu Dhabi as a pivotal hub for international arbitration….

In an important decision upholding the finality of awards and party autonomy in international commercial arbitration, a divided three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit recently held in Compañía de Inversiones Mercantiles SA v. Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua SAB de CV (58 F.4th 429 (10th Cir. 2023)) that recognition of…

The Republic of China, also known as “Taiwan,” is among the world’s leading economies.  In 2021, Taiwan had a gross domestic product of US$ 670 billion, predicted to increase by 6.45% in 2022; by 2026, Taiwan is projected to be the world’s twentieth largest economy.  Taiwan was the United States’ eleventh largest trading partner in…

International proceedings have already been initiated against Russia by Ukraine in the International Court of Justice.  Other proceedings in international tribunals, including the International Criminal Court, have also been commenced as the prosecutor has opened an investigation.  This post proposes that another forum, and set of international legal claims, should also be pursued: the historical…

John Steinbeck’s classic novella, “Of Mice and Men,” took a modern day form in the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week – appropriately enough, for purposes of this blog, in an arbitration matter.  As others have commented on social media, during oral argument in Badgerow v. Walters, Case No. 20-1143 (U.S. S. Ct.), the Supreme…

The Presidential Commission on Supreme Court of the United States, established earlier this year by President Biden, released a draft Report last week assessing recent proposals to restructure the U.S. Supreme Court.  Readers from outside the United States, as well as many within, can be forgiven for seeing no apparent connection between that Report and…

In a series of recent posts (Part I, Part II and Part III), I argued that states should not ratify the Hague Choice of Court Agreements Convention (“Convention”) and, if they had already done so, that they should denounce the Convention.  Two good friends, Trevor Hartley and João Ribeiro-Bidaoui, recently responded on Kluwer Arbitration Blog…

This post continues from Part I. Party Autonomy and Consent:  How the Convention Undermines Them My previous posts argued that the Convention undermines vital protections that existing law provides for party autonomy and genuine consent.  In response, Mr. Ribeiro argues that the Convention advances notions of party autonomy: it supposedly serves to “enable parties to…

In June 2020, we ran a survey of users’ experiences with remote hearings.  Our preliminary findings, which we published in International Arbitration and the COVID-19 Revolution (edited by Maxi Scherer, Niuscha Bassiri, Mohamed S. Abdel Wahab) showed that over ten times more fully remote hearings appeared to have taken place on an annualised basis in…

The 2005 Choice-of-Court Agreements Convention (“Convention”) has been widely promoted by the Hague Conference on Private International Law (“Hague Conference”) and others.  This post continues the discussion in two prior posts (Part I and Part II) in this series which argued that it was inappropriate to transpose the New York Convention’s basis structure and terms…

The 2005 Convention on Choice-of-Court Agreements (“Convention”) has been vigorously endorsed by the Hague Conference on Private International Law (“Hague Conference”) and others as an alternative to the New York Convention, appropriate for ratification by all states. The first post in this series discusses the Convention’s drafting history and proponents’ claim that the Convention ensures…

Over the past decade, the 2005 Convention on Choice-of-Court Agreements (“Convention”) has been vigorously promoted by the Hague Conference on Private International Law’s Permanent Bureau, the European Union and others.  The Convention has been endorsed as a global instrument, appropriate for ratification by all states, that establishes an alternative to international arbitration for the resolution…

The Abu Dhabi Court of Cassation in Case No. 922 of 2020 recently considered the requirements that must be satisfied to conclude an arbitration agreement by powers of attorney. The judgment is the latest in a line of authorities confirming that special requirements apply to the formation of arbitration agreements (a courtesy translation of the…

The contents of this issue of the journal is now available and includes the following contributions:   Georgia Dawson & Kate Apostolova, Banks as Claimants in Investment Arbitration Historically, banks have tended to prefer litigation over arbitration for their disputes. However, in recent years, banks have increasingly been using international arbitration instead, particularly when doing…

On 31 March 2020, the Republic of Palau (“Palau”) became the 163th state to accede to the United Nations Convention on Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards 1958 (the “Convention”).1)The authors were engaged by the Asian Development Bank (“ADB”) as part of a team of experts to advise on Palau’s accession to the Convention…

The contents of this issue of the journal is now available and includes the following contributions:   Nobumichi Teramura, The Strengths and Weaknesses of Arguments Pertaining to Ex Aequo et Bono Ex aequo et bono is a means of resolving disputes in light of fairness and good conscience. The principle has been known to jurists…

The contents of this issue of the journal is now available and includes the following contributions:   Eunice Chua, ‘Enforcement Of International Mediated Settlement Agreements In Asia: A Path Towards Convergence’ In 2014, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (‘UNCITRAL’) first considered a proposal for the development of a multilateral convention on the…

The contents of this issue of the journal is now available and includes the following contributions:   Rachel Chiu Li Hsien, ‘A World Without Borders; A New World Order: Navigating Cross-Border Insolvencies Through Arbitration’ To date, multi-jurisdictional efforts aimed at managing cross-border insolvencies are largely limited to broad speaks of cooperation between national Courts. Absent…

On 23 October, Gary Born participated in a Fireside Chat titled “How to Become a Star in International Arbitration in Five (Easy?) Steps, and is it Still Possible?”. The interview took place in Moscow and was conducted by Sergey Usoskin of Double Bridge Law, and Mikhail Kalinin of Norton Rose Fulbright. It was moderated by Alexandra…

Kluwer Law International and the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) are pleased to announce their new partnership in publishing the latest edition of the Asian International Arbitration Journal (AIAJ). In this 2018 publication, Mr Gary Born, President of the SIAC Court of Arbitration, joins Professor Lawrence Boo as a General Co-Editor of the AIAJ. The…

by Gary Born, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP Preliminarily, I am delighted to report on the publication, this month, of the Second Edition of International Arbitration: Law and Practice (2d ed. Kluwer 2015).  For readers who are interested in the book, click here. More importantly, I am also delighted to report, in my…

We are pleased to announce the publication of a Model Bilateral Arbitration Treaty for comment by interested governmental, commercial and other parties. Comments can be sent to whbilateral_arbitration_treaty@wilmerhale.com or posted for public review by commenting below. The Model Bilateral Arbitration Treaty (“BAT”) provides a default arbitration mechanism for the resolution of defined international commercial disputes….

As Professor Stacie Strong describes in the conclusion to her impressive work on Class, Mass, and Collective Arbitration in National and International Law, “[t]he last few decades have seen a number of significant shifts in the social, legal, and economic world order, resulting in the increased incidence of large-scale harms in both domestic and cross-border…

and Mitchell Moranis, WilmerHale As discussed recently in this forum, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties is the prevailing mechanism for the interpretation of investment treaties (Interpreting Investment Treaties, Roberto Castro de Figueiredo, 21 Oct. 2014). The Vienna Convention, however, was adopted in May 1969. According to the ICSID Database of Bilateral Investment…