The Singapore International Arbitration Centre (“SIAC”) has issued new rules that came into force on April 1, 2013. The rules changes are accompanied by new Practice Notes for cases administered by SIAC under its rules and the UNCITRAL rules that also came into force on the same date. While the changes do not reflect a…

By Crenguta Leaua and Stefan Dudas (Leaua & Asociatii) A new Code of Civil Procedure (CCP) including two separate sections on domestic and international arbitration entered into force in Romania on 15th of February. With this step, Romanian law continues to differentiate between domestic and international arbitration and to allow for a flexible regime for…

This post is a little different… I am in the process of revising my treatise, International Commercial Arbitration (Kluwer 2009), and would like to solicit comments from readers of the Kluwer Arbitration Blog on various chapters of the book. I would be happy to send individual Chapters, in their revised form, to those interested in…

A new study of dispute resolution practices in Fortune 1,000 corporations shows that many large companies are using binding arbitration less often and relying more on mediated negotiation and other approaches aimed at resolving disputes informally, quickly and inexpensively. The 2011 survey of corporate counsel developed by researchers at Cornell University’s Scheinman Institute on Conflict…

Construction work at the Florence Chamber of Commerce has forced the city’s arbitration and mediation services to relocate to new offices the city was able to scrounge up. This is the view from the fourth-floor conference room assigned to a mediation I attended yesterday. Talk about coping well in the face of adversity… Throughout many…

In an earlier post, I’d highlighted five notable legal highlights from 2012. Below, and somewhat belatedly, I offer my post-mortem on some key policy developments from 2012. 1. Venezuela and South Africa beat a retreat Venezuela’s exit from ICSID was perhaps the most visible policy story of 2012. The move could bolster the caseload of…

Last year, international media reported that the Ministry of Defense of Iran and Aerospace Industries Organization have commenced an arbitration against their Russian state-owned defense contractor Rosoboronexport over the latter’s refusal to deliver five batteries of the potent S-300 surface-to-air missiles under the contract signed back in 2007. Following the adoption of UN Security Council…

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations have become the territory where a brewing perfect storm over investor-state dispute resolution (ISDR) is making landfall. The June 2012 leak of the draft TPP Investment Chapter text added energy, but much more is fueling this tempest. In general the ISDR system is coming under increased scrutiny. Public and policymaker concerns…

By Tai-Heng Cheng* & Lucas Bento** Introduction On October 5th, 2012, a split ICSID tribunal determined that the Republic of Ecuador had breached the US-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty (“BIT”), and awarded damages of US$1.77 billion (US$2.3 billion with interest applied), reportedly the largest award ever to have been issued by an ICSID tribunal. This award…

There are many clients who are often engaged in industrious works that result in disputes. Typically, the applicable arbitral agreements requirement submitting claims to international arbitration and, in this author’s opinion, appropriately so. However, these same clients may also be subject to frequent claim assertions that lack any true merit. Despite this, there is not…

In a recent post, here, I argued that the time has come to move on from the gumshoe clue-hunting approach currently employed to select international arbitrators. Existing practices are severely outdated and unduly expensive in an era of information and technological efficiency. The process for selecting arbitrators, I argued, should be more transparent and key…

On 14 October 2012, Justice David Williams of the DIFC Court of First Instance (Dubai International Financial Centre) applied a course correction by issuing a decision confirming the jurisdiction of the DIFC Courts to grant a stay in the presence of a valid arbitration agreement providing for a seat of arbitration outside the DIFC. Justice…

A few months ago I wrote a post on this Blog about what I saw as “work left to do” in the Spanish arbitration system. I started with the need to build a regional court of arbitration on a par with those well-known centres in other jurisdictions, with the fundamental aim of taking advantage of…

Transparency of investment treaty arbitration is back on the radar this week as delegations convene in Vienna for the latest meeting of the UNCITRAL Working Group II on Arbitration and Conciliation. While governments debate the scope and content of new transparency obligations, one issue that has received less attention is a sometimes-seen corollary of greater…

The English Court of Appeal’s recent decision in Sulamerica CIA Nacional De Seguros SA v Enesa Engenharia SA [2012] EWCA Civ 638, which is discussed in a recent post by Guy Pendell, underscores an important weakness in the international arbitration system’s legal framework. While everyone accepts that the arbitration agreement is the foundation of an…

Last Monday I was honored with the opportunity to serve as one of the speakers for the annual ICC New York Conference. With an overflowing turnout and impressive list of panelists, it was a successful event. One interesting event of note was that the ICC took this opportunity to release the ICC Commission Report on…

Reminder — The September 1 deadline is now drawing near for the Call for Papers, for the Institute of Transnational Arbitration (ITA)’s Winter Forum in Miami on January 24-25. Details of the Call for Papers, which focuses on works-in-progress in the area of international arbitration, are available at: https://www.cailaw.org/ita/2013winforum_papers.pdf and/or https://wolterskluwerblogs.com/?s=winter. We anticipate announcing the…

As Rusty Park remarked, “[I]n real estate the three key elements are ‘location, location, location,’ … in arbitration the applicable trinity is ‘arbitrator, arbitrator, arbitrator.”’ Empirical studies consistently verify that parties’ ability to select arbitrators is one of the primary reasons they select arbitration as a means of dispute resolution. Parties also consistently vote with…

In a recent blog post, Gary Born highlighted the current role of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in administering state-to-state arbitrations. Given that the PCA has recently released its Annual Report for 2011, I thought I’d complement Gary’s post with some further information about the PCA’s role in administering investor-to-state arbitrations. It’s useful to set…

On September 10, 2012, The International Chamber of Commerce (“ICC”) in New York will be hosting the seventh annual conference. Located in New York City, the ICC Conference will be looking at investor-state arbitration, specifically under the rules of the ICC. The ICC has been working hard to build up its profile in the international…

Here are some recent issues colleagues or acquaintences tell me they are facing with international arbitration, without (or with slightly altered) information that might identify a particular proceeding or party. My own comments follow each. I invite readers to amplify with their own views on how to handle these situations, or compare with issues they…

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which sits in Atlanta, waded into the debate concerning whether 28 U.S.C. § 1782 — which provides U.S. district courts with the power to order parties to give testimony or produce documents “for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal” —…

On June 25th, 2012 the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which covers all federal appeals emanating from the states of Florida, Georgia and Alabama, decided that a private commercial arbitration tribunal in Ecuador used by the parties to resolve a commercial dispute is a ‘tribunal’ for purposes of the collection of…