The International Academy of Comparative Law (IACL) held its XXI General Congress in October 2022. The topic of one of the sessions was Impartiality and Independence of International Adjudicators. The purpose of the work was to assess criteria, mechanisms and remedies applied in the various legal systems (including international courts and arbitration) to ensure the…
Caroline Kenny KC is a barrister, mediator, and arbitrator. She has over 30 years’ experience in commercial disputes. In 2008 she was appointed as Kings’ Counsel and has since been recognised as a Chartered Arbitrator – the only female Chartered Arbitrator in Australia. Caroline’s arbitration experience therefore spans across various roles within international commercial arbitration…
After a gala evening at the National Museum of Scotland filled with Scottish gastronomy and ceilidh dancing, delegates returned to the conference centre for the last day of the ICCA Congress. Renaissance Arbitrator This panel asked: “what can lawyers and arbitrators learn from disciplines outside the law and arbitration?”. That question is particularly timely as…
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,…
Wolters Kluwer recently launched the Profile Navigator and Relationship Indicator tools within the Kluwer Arbitration Practice Plus suite of arbitration products. Kluwer Arbitration Blog recently met with Dr. Nikos Lavranos and Ewa Cairns-Szkatuła to discuss this new development. Dr. Lavranos is Founder of NL-investmentconsulting and acts as legal counsel, arbitrator, mediator and offers a broad…
It is not uncommon in arbitration proceedings for interim measures to be necessary to avoid the relief intended on the merits from being frustrated. Interim measures in support of arbitration can now fortunately be ordered not only by national courts but also by arbitrators in most jurisdictions. In most instances, interim measures granted by arbitral…
In the absence of concrete publicly available information about arbitrators, arbitration practitioners often resort to cognitive shortcuts and just plain guesswork in the arbitrator selection process. As explored in a previous post, parties and counsel frequently rely on arbitrators’ common-law or civil-law education and practice as indicators for how they might approach key case management…
Ms Lucy Reed is a full-time arbitrator and a Visiting Professor at National University of Singapore. Previously, she was the Co-Head of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s Global International Arbitration Group. Her prior experience includes acting as the US Agent to the Iran-US Claims Tribunal and as General Counsel of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (“KEDO”). …
Arbitrators make many decisions that affect the outcome of a case. The most obvious decisions are, of course, their decisions on the merits. But arbitrators also make a host of other procedural and case management decisions that can affect the outcome of a case. Procedural and case management decisions may include rulings on briefing and…
Most international arbitration institutions have already adopted regulations concerning the roles of tribunal secretaries and scope of their duties. Although this topic has not been on the radar for some time now, several incoming court decisions are likely to reverse this trend. This post sets out a few critical views on the current practice in…
In June 2020, the Swiss Arbitration Association (ASA) launched its much-awaited Arbitration Toolbox, an online and interactive tool that guides a user through the various stages of an arbitration. Initially the brainchild of former ASA President, Elliott Geisinger, the Toolbox was brought to fruition under the presidency of the current ASA President Felix Dasser. The…
On 12 October 2021, the Africa Arbitration Academy organized its annual debate themed “Battle of the Titans” as part of its 2021 Flagship Training Programme. The debate was moderated by Dr. Emilia Onyema, Professor of International Commercial Law, SOAS University of London and featured two pre-eminent arbitration practitioners – Prof. Gary Born and Prof. Jan…
Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. announced enhancements to Arbitrator Tool and a new Relationship Assessment Tool within Kluwer Arbitration Practice Plus (KAPP). Integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning with Wolters Kluwer’s arbitration expertise, the new features will provide arbitration professionals with valuable insights to assess arbitrators, properly advise their clients, and increase their rate…
I recently co-chaired with Gustav Flecke-Giammarco a Delos roundtable on this topic, at the kind invitation of its President and Co-Founder, Hafez Virjee. The topic links to a broader theme: how to be an international arbitration practitioner and manage some balance while at it? It can be tricky, and I am conscious that especially during…
On 1 September 2021, Global Arbitration Review (GAR) launched a new diversity-themed addition to its GAR Connect series, “Breaking In: How international arbitration becomes more diverse.”1)The authors would like to thank Racial Equality for Arbitration Lawyers (R.E.A.L.) for providing a scholarship to attend the event. The event, co-chaired by Adriana Braghetta (Adriana Braghetta Lawyers), Nayla…
This week has seen the launch of a new initiative – ARBinBRIEF. ARBinBRIEF is a practical video guide on handpicked arbitration issues. ARBinBRIEF aims to provide a concise, yet very informative insight into arbitration-related topics to all members of the arbitration community. The ARBinBRIEF series is divided into seasons consisting of 10 episodes each. Each…
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…
In recent years, a range of organizations have sprung up to challenge the existing hegemony in arbitrator appointments. As an opening gambit, ArbitralWomen pushed to have arbitral institutions publish statistics regarding the gender of arbitrators sitting in their cases. Then, with clearer understanding of gender deficits, ArbitralWomen together with the ERA Pledge urged parties and…
The relationship between commercial arbitration and European human rights law raises a number of conceptually difficult issues. How can the State be regarded as responsible at all for conduct of private arbitral proceedings? And how does the concept of an independent and impartial tribunal apply to a decision-making body appointed by the parties themselves? The…
In the wake of BEG (see Part I), what conclusions can we draw about the place of arbitral independence and impartiality in the ECtHR’s Article 6 jurisprudence? State Responsibility and Private Arbitral Proceedings Is a contracting State now in principle answerable under the Convention for the conduct of all private arbitral proceedings taking place…
The Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA) hosted an oral history session with The Hon. Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, interviewed by Prof. Victoria Shannon Sahani. The session, held on March 22, 2021, was part of the ITA Academic Council’s ongoing Preserving Perspectives project which aims to record the evolution of modern international arbitration in the words of…
The Rising Arbitrator’s Challenge Webinar Series, organized by the Rising Arbitrator Initiative (RAI), took place online, on 22 April 2021. The event, with a regional focus on Africa, was the fifth leg of the series, with previous instalments covering North America, South America, Europe and Asia. Under the guidance of Victoria Kigen (Nairobi Centre for…
In 2017 Spain was ordered to pay Eiser €128 million on account of its failure to afford fair and equitable treatment. This award was subsequently annulled because the claimant-appointed arbitrator omitted to disclose a professional relationship with the claimants’ damages expert which led to, inter alia, the tribunal being improperly constituted. The full costs of…
On 24 March 2021, the Rising Arbitrators Initiative (RAI) held the fourth session of its webinar series “The Rising Arbitrator’s Challenge: Navigating the Promise and Perils of Your First Appointments”. This fourth conference focused on the challenges that first appointments bring to arbitrators in Latin America and has brought together both young and more seasoned…
