Having disposed of yet another forest worth of pristine hearing bundles, I wonder: when will arbitration finally go paperless? Gillian Lemaire asked the same question in a 2014 piece called “Where Do We Stand?” She looked at the legal and factual obstacles that paperless arbitrations face. Finding that, in reality, there were few, she proposed…
Heading The July 2016 Award of the Tribunal in the South China Sea Arbitration (The Republic of the Philippines v The Peoples’ Republic of China) has been the subject of extensive interest and comment for its findings on rights and maritime entitlements, and the obligations of States under the United Nations Convention on the Law…
On 4 April 2016, the Singapore Court of Appeal heard an appeal from Sanum Investments Limited (“Sanum“) (a Macanese company) against the High Court’s decision holding that an arbitral tribunal hearing Sanum’s claim against Laos for expropriation under the China-Laos bilateral investment treaty (the “BIT“) had no jurisdiction. The issue of the tribunal’s jurisdiction turns…
Introduction Expert conferencing is undoubtedly gaining popularity in international arbitration. Many leading arbitrators are supporters and proponents of expert conferencing. Its attraction is growing in Singapore, as borne out by the results of a 2013 survey by the Singapore International Arbitration Centre. Expert conferencing can prove a baffling process for the lawyer trained to deal…
and Paul Tan, Jawad Ahmad and Victor Steinmetz, Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP In what marks the first time where a Singapore court reviews an investment arbitral tribunal’s jurisdiction, the High Court held in Government of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic v Sanum Investments Ltd [2015] SGHC 15 that, contrary to the tribunal’s findings, the…
By Georg von Segesser / Elisabeth Leimbacher / Katherine Bell, Schellenberg Wittmer Ltd. In two almost identical German language decisions dated 27 March 2014 (Decisions 4A_362/2013 and 4A_448/2013) the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (“Supreme Court”) considered that the reliance on an illegally obtained video recording in a CAS award does not violate public policy (these…
In the early stages of an international arbitration, the arbitral tribunal should make sure that the parties understand the standard of proof that applies to each claim in the arbitration and identify the party that has to satisfy this burden. The decision on the standard of proof should also be incorporated as a substantive decision…
By Karen Mills, Mirèze Philippe and Ileana M. Smeureanu The views expressed are those of the authors alone and should not be regarded as representative of or binding upon the institution or the law firms they belong to. In the last twenty years there has been a proliferation of books, publications and articles about arbitration….
The recent Portuguese Voluntary Arbitration Law, which has been in force since 14 March 2012, (English version available here), was received with great enthusiasm amongst the legal community, which claimed for a new arbitration law that could bring to Portugal a regulatory framework closer to the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration. The goal…
I have posted on SSRN my latest article, “Ancillary Discovery to Prove Denial of Justice” just published in the Virginia Journal of International Law. It analyzes Section 1782 discovery proceedings in the context of BIT arbitration and argues that there is now uniform agreement among federal courts that investment arbitration panels are “international tribunals” within…
Broadly defined, the word “deposition” refers to the taking of a “written record of a witness’s out-of-court testimony.” (Bryan A. Gardner, Black’s Law Dictionary, 8th edition , p. 472.) This general definition notwithstanding, in practice the word “deposition” has become closely associated with US pre-trial discovery. The witness deposition, which is attended by lawyers for…
The addition of the good faith requirement to the 2010 IBA Rules on the Taking of Evidence in International Arbitration has been criticized in a recent law review article. In Good Faith, Bad Faith, But Not Losing Faith: A Commentary on the 2010 IBA Rules on the Taking of Evidence in International Arbitration, Pedro J….
Conventional wisdom holds that one of the virtues of international arbitration is the ability to blend divergent procedures, generally referring to civil and common law traditions. The IBA Rules of Evidence, for example, seek to strike a balance among different legal cultures. “Harmonization” and “flexibility” are the terms commonly used to refer to this mixing…
In its decision 4A_162/2011 of 20 July 2011, which was published on 2 September 2011, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court elaborated on the content of – and limits to – the right of parties to call witnesses. The arbitration which gave rise to the decision was between the Jamaica Football Federation and its former coach,…
