The practice of early determination, already customary to common law, has increasingly gained ground in investment and commercial arbitration, being introduced to various arbitration rules. It aims to enhance efficiency by narrowing the issues in dispute or rejecting the whole claim at an early stage, saving both time and cost in a proceeding. In practice,…
The year 2022 seems to have passed in a flash, but not without bringing some exciting developments for the arbitration scene in Southeast Asia. From the Southeast Asia editorial team, here are some of the past year’s highlights. Developments in the law and jurisprudence Contributors to the Kluwer Arbitration Blog critically analysed the Singapore…
The international arbitration community has made progress on improving diversity across the field, but continues to fall short on appointing diverse international arbitration tribunals. Experts point to a range of reasons for the lack of diversity in international arbitration tribunals, chief among which is the lack of an experienced pool, coupled with the reluctance of…
The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), a networking and business support organisation that caters to the London business community, launched the London Chamber of Arbitration and Mediation (LCAM) in May 2020. I wrote at the time a post exploring the LCAM’s inaugural Arbitration Rules and examining some aspects of the LCAM as an institution. The last two…
Two years since it was published, the draft of the Code of Conduct for Adjudicators in International Investment Disputes is still subject to discussion and refinement by States and other stakeholders participating in the UNCITRAL Working Group III (WG III). This evolving instrument, developed jointly by the ICSID and UNCITRAL Secretariats, is the first attempt…
Nicole Smith is the Vice-President of the Arbitrators’ and Mediators’ Institute of New Zealand (AMINZ), the leading membership organisation for dispute resolution specialists in New Zealand. In addition to her work with AMINZ, Nicole is also a barrister at Mauao Legal Chambers specialising in commercial litigation and arbitration. Dual qualified in New Zealand and England…
Welcome to the Kluwer Arbitration Blog, Ms. Vera! We are grateful for this opportunity to learn more about the Center for Arbitration and Mediation of the Ecuadorian-American Chamber of Commerce (CAM-AMCHAM Ecuador), and its administration of complex disputes, as well as about the attractiveness of Quito as a seat for international arbitration. To start, can…
Delos Dispute Resolution (Delos) has introduced its first significant update to the Delos Rules of Arbitration (the 2021 Delos Rules) which entered into force on 1 November 2021. The new rules range from including new provisions which align with other major arbitral institutions, for example on joinder and consolidation, to more radical innovations such as…
In 2021, Latin American countries continued to struggle with the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, legislative and jurisprudential developments on arbitration-related issues were also affected given that the governments were focused on reactivating local economies, vaccinating their citizens, and launching tax and labor reforms. In addition, presidential elections also marked political shifts for…
Globalization has diversified the actors, institutions, norms, and instruments on the international legal stage. With diversification comes increased specialization and, in turn, organization around so-called regimes. The notion that international legal regimes can exist autonomously has long been refuted; indeed, each regime draws from general international law to some degree. If regimes are not autonomous,…
This post deals with the conceptual underpinnings and theoretical justification for the practice of counterclaims in investment arbitration. First, it is important to delineate this post from an analysis of counterclaims case-law in investment arbitration, as ample accounts of the counterclaim debate in practice can be found here, here, and here. Equally, this post does…
The Danish Institute of Arbitration (the DIA) updated its arbitration rules this year. The DIA Rules of Arbitration 2021 (the DIA Rules 2021) apply to arbitrations commenced on or after 13 April 2021, unless otherwise agreed. The updated rules tell us that the DIA focuses on best practice, pragmatism and efficiency, and that they bolster…
The 2021 Paris Arbitration Week (PAW), which kicked off on Monday 20 September 2021, brings the arbitration community together in a hybrid format with participants and speakers attending in person and online from all over the globe, following a fully virtual edition in 2020. One of Monday’s sessions involved a series of Oxford-style debates on harmonization through…
Welcome to the Kluwer Arbitration Blog, Ms. Coelho! We are grateful for this opportunity to learn more about the Center for Arbitration and Mediation of the Chamber of Commerce Brazil-Canada (CAM-CCBC), and its administration of complex disputes, as well as about the attractiveness of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro as seats for international arbitration. …
Conflicts of interest between parties and arbitrators are common in arbitration proceedings. However, the academic community has not yet examined whether arbitral institutions may also run into conflicts of interest. This post will deal with this question and also examine measures that can mitigate any such risks of conflicts of interest for arbitral institutions. The…
International arbitration is changing at a fast pace, and opportunities arise every day in this field. In this context, on May 25, 2021, Young Arbitral Women Practitioners, Holland & Knight, and Rising Arbitrators Initiative co-hosted a webinar to discuss emerging fields of practice for arbitration lawyers. This post offers an overview of the variety of…
The Vienna International Arbitral Centre (“VIAC”) announces its most recent update to the VIAC Rules of Arbitration and Mediation (the VIAC Rules of Arbitration and Mediation 2021) taking effect on 1 July 2021. The revision of the VIAC Rules of Arbitration and Mediation was triggered by the drafting of the new standalone set of VIAC…
The Russian 2016 Arbitration Reform (the “Reform”) was a game-changer for both arbitration practitioners and the arbitral institutions. One of the major implications of the Reform was that so-called “corporate” disputes (which definition covers a large number of post-M&A disputes, including those arising out of share purchase agreements and shareholders’ agreements) could now only be…
Recent draft legislation submitted to the Ukrainian Parliament would introduce new regulations imposing stricter requirements for setting up domestic arbitral institutions (‘treteyskyi sud’) and, at the same time, introduce a framework for establishing new international arbitral institutions in Ukraine. This appears to be the latest legislative initiative in the line of recent reforms aimed at…
On April 19, 2021, the Secretariats of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) released the second draft of the Code of Conduct for Adjudicators in International Investment Disputes, a key feature of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) reform process which is presently under…
The results of the 2021 QMUL-White & Case International Arbitration Survey were launched on 6 May 2021. The survey explores the theme of “Adapting Arbitration to a Changing World”: how international arbitration has adapted to changing demands and circumstances including the COVID-19 pandemic, and opportunities for the international arbitration community to adapt more and better….
The Arbitration Committee of the New York City Bar Association has recently published a report titled: “The Functus Officio Problem in Modern Arbitration and a Proposed Solution” (the “Report”). In United States arbitration, the functus officio doctrine instructs that once an arbitrator finishes performance of her office, i.e., renders an award, her authority as an…
In a field as competitive as arbitration, international reputation is earned, not created overnight. In 2021, various judgments of the Spanish Constitutional Court (see here, here and here) have done away with some case law by inferior Madrid courts which favoured an expansive review of awards and compromised the finality of arbitration (see here and here). Spain is…
Following a highly-publicized diplomatic battle among the EU Member States (MS), the EU revealed in mid-February its proposal to amend the ECT’s definition of the “Economic Activity in the Energy Sector” (EAES). The announcement allayed fears of the intra-EU discussions on the matter falling apart. Insofar as it sets forth a vision for amendments that…
