In the last decade, India has emerged as a prominent pro-arbitration jurisdiction owing to several factors including legislative changes to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (“Arbitration Act”). Indian courts have been at the forefront of this movement and consistently interpreted Indian law in favour of arbitration rather than against arbitration. A noticeable trend has…
On 11 April 2024, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (“Court”) issued its decision in Ballantry Construction Management Inc. v GR (CAN) Investment Co. Ltd., arising from an application to enforce two arbitration awards filed by Ballantry Construction Management (the “Applicant”). The Respondent in this application, Investment Co. Ltd, sought an order setting aside the awards…
This is the second post in ICCA’s series of reports on the ICCA 2024 Congress (“Congress”), which took place in Hong Kong. This post reports on the events of Monday, 6 May 2024, the first full day of the Congress. As informed by ICCA President, Dr Stanimir Alexandrov, in the opening post to this series,…
“You want to tell us you don’t want to sow, you want to reap” asked the Nigerian appointed arbitrator, Chief Bayo OJO, during oral argument in the arbitration proceedings, to which Nigerian counsel, Chief Ayorinde, responded: “You cannot reap where you do not sow. That is a very Nigerian saying.” (Nigeria v. Process & Industrial…
Introduction ChatGPT is short for “Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer”. It is an artificially intelligent text generation bot that can have a conversation. It does so by using a language processing algorithm called a “Transformer”, which generates natural language responses to user input. There are various user platforms, for example, https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt. ChatGPT is simple, like any…
International arbitration is a prime example of the power and complexity of combined human minds. It is a marvel of human cooperation and ingenuity that strangers forego barbarism in favour of peaceful resolution – even more so when they do it cross-borders, on the unlikely belief that their interests will be guarded by yet another…
Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity. Henry Spencer International arbitration professionals are a strikingly homogenous population, as our recent 360 degree overview demonstrated. The demographic markers typically used to arrive at this conclusion are age, race, gender and national origin. While these fundamental indicators merit continued…
Over the last few years, arbitrator independence and impartiality have been under heightened scrutiny by courts and tribunals. This is not unexpected. The importance of the rule against bias is best explained by Lord Denning’s dictum in Metropolitan Properties Co (FGC) Ltd v Lannon [1969] 1 QB 577 where he held that “[j]ustice must be…
Canadian Arbitration Week ran online from September 20 – 24, 2021 under the theme of adaptation and acceleration. A timely focus as the pandemic continues to accelerate sweeping changes in the legal world. The 2021 YCAP Fall Symposium titled “New World, New Rules” took place on September 23 and addressed the theme in a session…
In November last year, the UK Supreme Court (the “Court”) pronounced judgment in Halliburton Company v Chubb Bermuda Insurance Ltd [2020] UKSC 48. It held, among other things, that there was a duty of disclosure for arbitrators in English law. Recognizing the importance of the principle of party autonomy, the Court concluded that parties could,…
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…
Wolters Kluwer teamed up with the global law firm Clifford Chance to discuss the advances in artificial intelligence (AI), its limitations, and various applications in an interactive webinar titled Artificial Intelligence and Arbitration: Should We Keep It Real? The lively discussion covered AI fundamentals, in addition to recent developments in the field. The panel also…
On 27 November 2020, the U.K. Supreme Court in Halliburton Company v. Chubb Bermuda Insurance Ltd (formerly known as Ace Bermuda Insurance Ltd) [2020] UKSC 48 ruled on the approach under English law to determining whether an arbitrator’s failure to make disclosure of appointments in multiple arbitrations with overlapping subject matter and only one common…
Introduction Humans versus robots: the YSIAC debate held yesterday as part of YSIAC Conference 2019 sought to address the deep question of what it means for us to be human and the timely question of whether technology can and will, one day, surpass us. The moderator for the debate was Professor Nadja Alexander (Director, SIDRA)….
The UK Supreme Court will hear an appeal from Halliburton Company v Chubb Bermuda Insurance Ltd [2018] EWCA Civ 817 on whether an arbitrator may accept appointments in multiple references concerning the overlapping subject matter with only one common party, without giving rise to an appearance of bias and without disclosure. As it stands, the…
In the beautiful surroundings of the Palais Niederosterreicher, the 200+ delegates at Vienna Arbitration Days (VAD) 2019 were warmly welcomed by members of the Organising Committee, representing ArbAut, VIAC, AYIA (the Austrian Yearbook of International Arbitration), ICC Austria, YAAP (Young Austrian Arbitration Practitioners), and UNCITRAL. Anna Joubin-Bret, UNCITRAL’s Secretary, provided an overview of UNCITRAL’s work…
Some rules, although made to protect the integrity of an arbitration procedure, open up opportunities for bad faith actors to utilize “legislative” shortcomings. Too often these actors engage in guerilla tactics. Soft law has developed to remedy these grievances. For example, the IBA Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration (IBA Guidelines) seek to…
On December 12, 2017, the Supreme Court of Japan rendered its first decision on the setting aside of an arbitral award based on an arbitrator’s failure to disclose facts allegedly constituting a conflict of interest, reasoning that, in order for the award to be set aside on this ground, it is necessary that the arbitrator…
Introduction As noted in Part 1 of this two-part series, the ability to select an arbitrator is widely considered one of the most valuable characteristics of international arbitration. While Part 1 focused on removal of arbitrators for apparent bias, this Part 2 focuses on the parties’ ability to remove an arbitrator if he/she proves unable,…
Introduction The ability to select an arbitrator is widely considered one of the most valuable characteristics of international arbitration. According to the Queen Mary University and White & Case 2015 International Arbitration Survey, selection of arbitrators was considered its fourth most important characteristic, with 38% of respondents rating it among their top three. Surely, then,…
Introduction On 23 May 2016, CIETAC’s Hong Kong Arbitration Center (CIETAC HKAC) issued for public consultation draft Guidelines for third party funding (the draft Guidelines). Third party funding (TPF) is a hot topic in Hong Kong. The draft Guidelines come in the wake of recent initiatives to clarify the law on TPF in the territory,…
The ICSID Convention threshold for arbitrators’ challenges, upholding challenges only if arbitrators exhibit a manifest lack of the qualities required to sit as arbitrators (Art. 57 ICSID Convention), has in the past been criticized as being too strict. Recently, however, few decisions, discussed in this post, seem to show that the ICSID “manifest” threshold is…
During a bitter battle with anti-doping authorities, international cycling champion Lance Armstrong publicly campaigned against the anti-doping arbitration process. Armstrong’s offensive provides insights into widespread misconceptions about arbitration. On 20 August 2012, a U.S. Federal District Court dismissed Armstrong’s petition to enjoin the U.S. Anti Doping Agency (USADA) from further pursuing allegations that he was part…
What makes an international arbitrator different from a national judge? All of us in the arbitration world have a pretty solid answer to this question. At what point do the distinctions between an international arbitrator and an international judge melt away? That’s a bit of a trickier question, depending on the case. With the increase…
