My friend and colleague David Caron, C. William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, has been named the new Dean at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London. The press release is here. I have known David Caron for over twenty years and always thought he would…
So we all know that investment arbitration tribunals have relied on WTO precedent for persuasive authority as to the meaning of various terms in bilateral investment treaties. (Think the emergency exception in the Argentina arbitrations and references to WTO Article XXI). But does the reverse also happen? Do WTO panels or the WTO Appellate Body…
I have just published an article in the Utah Law Review that I wanted to flag for our readers. For the international arbitration community the article is relevant because it compares and contrasts the self-judging WTO security exception with non-self-judging emergency exceptions in various BITs. The focus of the Article is on the WTO security…
The shoe has finally dropped. Ever since the Invictus Memo was released to the public we knew that the Ecuadorian Plaintiffs were considering twenty-seven different countries to enforce the $18.2 Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron. With Chevron’s far-flung assets, it was plausible that the Plaintiffs would choose to enforce the judgment in countries with close ties…
When is an arbitral panel an international tribunal for purposes of Section 1782? Section 1782, of course, is the U.S. statute that authorizes federal courts to order discovery in aid of proceedings before foreign courts and international tribunals. As discussed in a forthcoming article in the Virginia Journal of International Law entitled, Ancillary Discovery to…
As many of you know, I am the General Editor of the ITA Arbitration Report of KluwerArbitration.com database, the primary online research portal for international arbitration practitioners. On behalf of the folks at Kluwer and the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, I am happy to announce an opening for the position of Managing Editor for the…
Last week I had the good fortune to attend a reception in Washington D.C. with various arbitration luminaries announcing the inauguration of the Jerusalem Arbitration Center. With almost $5 billion in annual trade between Palestine and Israel, it is imperative to establish a neutral forum for resolving business disputes. JAC is established under the auspices…
Last week was a blockbuster one in the ongoing battle between Chevron and Ecuador. On Wednesday, the arbitral tribunal adjudicating Chevron’s BIT claim issued an Interim Award ordering Ecuador “to take all measures at its disposal to suspend or cause to be suspended the enforcement or recognition within or without Ecuador of any judgment against…
On behalf of the many contributors to this blog and the good folks at Kluwer Law International, I am pleased to announce that this blog has won CPR’s 2011 award for best electronic media focused on ADR. The press release is here. As most of you know, the CPR Institute is a nonprofit think tank…
On January 3, 2012 an Ecuador Appeals Court affirmed the $18 billion judgment against Chevron in the long-running battle over environmental damage. (Available in English and the original Spanish here). According to an unofficial English translation of the sixteen page opinion, the Court dismissed all of Chevron’s arguments, including the allegations of fraud. Here is…
My friend David Bederman, the K.H. Gyr Professor in Private International Law at Emory Law School, has passed away. Emory Law School has offered kind remarks of his passing here, and here, and others offer their reflections on his life here, here, here and here. Bederman was a prince of a guy, and a great…
I am pleased to introduce Annalise Nelson as the new Assistant Editor for Kluwer Arbitration Blog. Annalise has a B.A. from Harvard College, a J.D. from University of Virginia and a Masters in Law and Economic Globalization from the Institut des Etudes Politiques (“Sciences Po”) and Paris I. She worked as a litigation, trade and…
On Monday, October 24, I’ll be participating in a panel discussion at NYU on the The Implications of Chevron v. Ecuador for Investor-State Arbitration. The event will be held at 6 p.m. at Furman Hall 900, 245 Sullivan Street, New York. The event is sponsored by NYU Law School’s Institute for International Law and Justice….
Luke Peterson passed along a tip about this interesting declaration attached to the U.S.-Rwanda Bilateral Investment Treaty: Articles 3 through 10 and other provisions that qualify or create exceptions to these Articles are self-executing. With the exception of these Articles, the Treaty is not self-executing. None of the provisions in this Treaty confers a private…
The CIArb’s Survey into the Costs of International Arbitration has now been published. It’s a fascinating survey worthy of study and discussion. Here’s a brief summary of some of the findings: “What did they spend it on? Regardless of the nature of the dispute and the amount of money that a party spent (whether claimant…
I received the following call for papers from our friends at the ITA and thought I would share it with our readers: In collaboration with the Academic Council, the Executive Committee and the Young Arbitrators Initiative of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA) are proud to announce the creation of a new annual Winter Forum….
Toby Landau gave the keynote address at the recent ITA Workshop in Dallas and, as always, he was entertaining and provocative. One of the central themes of his discussion was how arbitration counsel fail to present a case in a manner sensitive to the needs of the arbitration panel. “Inequality of Arms” is the term…
Last week I had the pleasure of working with Business Roundtable and a wonderful group of international law scholars–Rudolf Dolzer, Burkhard Hess, Herbert Kronke, Julian Ku, Davis Robinson, Christoph Schreuer, and Janet Walker–on a Second Circuit amicus brief addressing the propriety of antisuit injunctions under international law. The amicus brief addresses an appeal of Judge…
I am posting this CIArb’s press release for the benefit of our readers: The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) has launched a major survey into the costs of international arbitration. The ‘Costs of Arbitration’ survey will gather data to inform parties, legal representatives and arbitrators about the overall costs of international commercial arbitration and how…
José Augusto Fontoura Costa of the São Paulo Law Faculty has just published a fascinating paper analyzing the process by which WTO panelists and ICSID arbitrators are nominated. What is most interesting about his thesis is that he offers a different conception of why we have elite arbitrators, but not an elite cadre of WTO…
[Editor’s Note: Upon hearing the results of the Vis competition, I invited members of the winning team to do a blog post about their experience. Below are the reflections of the members of the University of Ottawa Vis team on winning the competition.] It’s nice when hard work pays off. It’s even nicer when five…
Gary Born has just published a great new casebook that is certain to become a standard text for international arbitration courses around the world. Everyone knows Born’s multi-volume treatise, which is invaluable as a reference tool, but hardly appropriate for the classroom. Now we have both, a great casebook to introduce the material to students…
As I discussed yesterday, an Ecuador Court has issued an $8.6 billion judgment against Chevron. I just got off a press conference call with plaintiff’s chief lawyer in Ecuador, Pablo Fajardo. He stated that the plaintiffs will seek enforcement of the Lago Agrio judgment throughout the world as soon as the Ecuador appeals process is…
Today an Ecuador court fined Chevron $8.6 billion for environmental damage. According to the Wall Street Journal, $5.4 billion of that is to restore polluted soil, $1.4 billion to create a health system for the community, $800 million to treat individuals injured by the pollution, $600 million to restore polluted waters, $200 million to restore…
