Many arbitration practitioners nowadays trace their initial interest in arbitration back to their student days, when they competed at the world’s largest and most renowned law student competition in the field of arbitration – the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot. Created in 1993 by Prof. Dr. Eric E. Bergsten, the Vis Moot Competition…

Can the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) be applicable to arbitration agreements? The literature has been divided on this matter, with several discernible approaches. This post explores the topic of applicability of the CISG to arbitration agreements from the perspective of the now (in)famous Enka v. Chubb case,…

Corruption is a sensitive issue for international merchants. According to the Transparency International’s report “Exporting Corruption”, enforcement against foreign bribery has dropped to its lowest level since it first began measuring it in 2009, which is alarming and reinforces the need for attention in arbitral proceedings. In international sales contracts, one should consider the consequences…

On 26 November 2020, the German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof—BGH) intervened in the “disputed” question of the applicability of the CISG to arbitration agreements (I ZR 245/19, para. 28). The Decision—based on the specific factual circumstances of the case and the most-favorable-law provision (Article VII) of the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement…

The relationship between arbitration and the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (“CISG” or “Convention”) is not a clear one, and the question of when an arbitrator is bound to apply the CISG is still not answered with clarity either by scholars or by practitioners. At a recent conference organized…

The year 2020 marks the 40th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), one of the most important substantive instruments in international commercial law. To celebrate this occasion, the ICDR Young and International (Y&I) group and NYU’s Center for Transnational Litigation, Arbitration, and Commercial Law organized a…

This post analyzes the problem stemming from the different form requirements established by the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (“NYC”) and the 1980 United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (“CISG”) with respect to the formation of the agreements the two Conventions regulate….

“Whatever the nature of the transaction, in international business there is one prime question fundamental to the validity, interpretation, effectiveness and enforceability of the contract: what law governs?” – Professor Julian Lew QC, Preface, Rethinking Choice of Law in Cross-Border Sales, Gustavo Moser (Eleven International Publishing, 2018). On 15 April 2019, a sunny Monday in…