Mid-hearing, the Arbitral Tribunal in Sea Search-Armada, LLC v. The Republic of Colombia (PCA Case 2023-37) received an application for intervention from the Kingdom of Spain. The letter asserted Spain’s claim to certain rights over the San José Galeon, a “Spanish Navy warship sunk in naval combat against an English squadron in 1708” near the…

The practice of adverse document production or disclosure is largely foreign in civil law jurisdictions like mainland China. Despite resistance, the growth of judicial practice on document production prompted the Supreme People’s Court of China (“SPC”) to make the new Rules of Evidence on Civil Procedure (“Rules of Evidence”) on December 25, 2019, effective as…

Principles of adverse inferences are applied universally. International law endorses the arbitrator’s inherent authority to draw adverse inferences against a party for unjustified non-compliance with an order to produce information. Moreover, arbitrators can rely on general principles of law when applying adverse inferences as a basis for decisions. The general principle of good faith imposes…