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…
On the unexpected passing of Emmanuel Gaillard at age 69, Kluwer Arbitration Blog reached to practitioners around the world, asking them to share how Emmanuel Gaillard influenced them or the practice of international arbitration. It would have been impossible to canvass everyone who has been touched in some way by Emmanuel Gaillard. Hopefully, the comments…
In establishing an International Chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal in 2018, France signalled its desire to make Paris a favoured venue for resolving complex international disputes. The International Chamber has jurisdiction in France over any and all disputes that involve international commercial interest, which include, in particular, disputes related to commercial and transport…
On 21 January 2021, the Rising Arbitrators Initiative (RAI) had the opportunity to speak with Claudia Salomon, the incoming first woman President of the ICC International Court of Arbitration (ICC Court), with closing remarks by Yves Derains, a former ICC Secretary General. RAI founders Rocío Digón (White & Case), Ana Gerdau de Borja Mercereau (Derains…
On 23 February 2021, the Rising Arbitrators Initiative (RAI) and HK45 co-hosted the third installment of the webinar series The Rising Arbitrator’s Challenge: Navigating the Promise and Perils of Your First Appointments. As the webinar series aims to shed light on different jurisdictions, the third installment focused on Asia. The overarching topic addressed the thorny…
On 27 January 2021, the Rising Arbitrators Initiative (RAI) hosted the second webinar of its series “The Rising Arbitrator’s Challenge: Navigating the Premise and Perils of Your First Appointment(s)”. The aim of the series of events is to support practitioners who are seeking or tackling their first appointments and each webinar is focused on a…
This post summarizes the International Court of Justice President Joan Donoghue’s discussion, on Delos Dispute Resolution’s TagTime series, with Dr. Kabir Duggal and Amanda Lee regarding cognitive biases of arbitrators, which are also applicable to judges. Judge Donoghue analogized the origin of those cognitive biases to how flamingos obtain their pink color, provided some examples…
The ITA (Institute for Transnational Arbitration) – ALARB (Latin American Society of Arbitration) Americas Workshop took place virtually on 2-4 December 2020. The conference focused on the role of arbitrators, their liabilities, challenges, and the need for increased diversity efforts. The conference was co-chaired by Julie Bédard (Skadden, New York), and Maria Inés Corrá (Bomchil, Buenos…
Let us be clear, the lightening’s spirit is out of the bottle and here to stay. It is neither possible nor desirable to prevent party counsel from using tools that increase the efficiency of party representation. Prof. Rogers and her co-authors provide a correct general description of AI-based information systems on decision makers. My firm…
On November 16th, 2020, the AAA-ICDR hosted a webinar entitled In-House Counsel’s Virtual Roundtable as part of New York Arbitration Week. The session comprised of in-house counsel from various industries discussed their views and approach to international arbitration from their respective fields. It was moderated by Eric P. Tuchmann, the Senior Vice President, General Counsel…
The Institute for Transnational Arbitration (“ITA”) hosted a four-part webinar discussing the Draft Code of Conduct for Adjudicators in Investor-State Dispute Settlement, between 21-25 September 2020. Each part addressed specific practical considerations raised by the matters addressed in the Draft Code of Conduct: issue conflict, double hatting, repeat appointments, and implementation and enforcement of the…
On 15 July 2020, an UNCITRAL Tribunal rendered a Partial Award on Jurisdiction in a dispute between Mr. Lee-Chin and the Dominican Republic (DR) concerning the alleged expropriation of a landfill in Santo Domingo. The arbitrators had to decide whether the arbitration clause – enshrined in Article XIII, Annex III, of the Caribbean Community-Dominican Republic…
In its decision of 11 June 2020, an ICSID Annulment Committee annulled an award in Eiser and Energia Solar Luxembourg v. Spain, ICSID Case No. ARB/13/36. It did so on the grounds that the arbitrator appointed by the investors, Stanimir Alexandrov, and his former law firm, Sidley Austin, had worked so closely and frequently with…
Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) follows the logic that if all attributes of learning and intelligence is accurately traced in-depth, it can be simulated through a computer program. In other words, ‘what holds good for [Human Intelligence], also applies to AI’.1)See H.J. Snijders, Arbitrage en AI: Van arbitrage naar robotrage en van menselijke arbiter naar robotarbiter?, Tijdschrift…
Long before the now-popular phrase “pale, male, and stale,” leading arbitrators were instead often referred to as a “club,” a “cartel,” or even a “monopoly.” Those references were meant metaphorically, even jokingly. The irony is that they turn out to hold important truths that are promiscuously intertwined with the pale-male-stale moniker. To understand both, we…
Next week was due to be the 39th session of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law’s (UNCITRAL) Working Group III, and its sixth session considering the issue of reform to investor-State dispute settlement (‘ISDS’). The session has since been postponed indefinitely, in light of the current global COVID-19 pandemic. In lieu of Working…
Like virtually all arbitration laws, the Austrian Arbitration Act is silent on whether the lack of impartiality and independence of an arbitrator may be invoked for the first time in setting aside proceedings in cases where a party becomes aware of the relevant circumstances only after the award was rendered. The Austrian Supreme Court has,…
