A few days ago I had the fortune of attending the fourth webinar of the Young ITA Mentorship Program – Speaker Series, entitled The (Sometimes Forgotten) Importance of the Arts and Psychology in Advocacy in International Arbitration. Part of the dialogue focused on reviewing whether theatrical study could be useful to lawyers in enhancing their…
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 Achmea saga has taken yet another twist. In a recent communication to the Dutch Parliament, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate disclosed that it initiated “anti-arbitration” proceedings before the German courts on 11 May 2021 to “avert” two ECT-based ICSID arbitrations brought against it by the German energy companies RWE and Uniper (“Communication”)….
International arbitration is changing at a fast pace, and opportunities arise every day in this field. In this context, on May 25, 2021, Young Arbitral Women Practitioners, Holland & Knight, and Rising Arbitrators Initiative co-hosted a webinar to discuss emerging fields of practice for arbitration lawyers. This post offers an overview of the variety of…
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, pharmaceutical companies have engaged in a highly competitive and risky vaccine race. In less than 10 months from the declaration of the global pandemic, the vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech received its first regulatory approval, followed by the success stories of other companies. The swiftness of these results was praised as “unprecedented”…
Intra-EU investment agreements and arbitration have been a highly divisive issue in European policy circles for decades. The European Commission has been forcefully pushing for the termination of these agreements since the early 2000s. It criticised inter alia that intra-EU investment agreements and arbitration undermine the European legal order and create inequality among European investors…
The launch of Racial Equality for Arbitration Lawyers (REAL) took place on 18 January 2021.The date to launch this initiative coincided with Martin Luther King’s Day, to commemorate the birth of this influential civil rights leader, known for his fight for racial equality. The initiative is led by Kabir Duggal, Rekha Rangachari, and Crina Baltag,…
As the transition period following the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU approached, there was much speculation about what a “no deal” Brexit might entail. Optimistically, some drew inspiration from Singapore to suggest a possible future for the City of London as an “offshore” European financial services hub. While the exclusion of financial services from…
Following a highly-publicized diplomatic battle among the EU Member States (MS), the EU revealed in mid-February its proposal to amend the ECT’s definition of the “Economic Activity in the Energy Sector” (EAES). The announcement allayed fears of the intra-EU discussions on the matter falling apart. Insofar as it sets forth a vision for amendments that…
For more than a decade, it was evident that anti-suit injunctions are not permitted in the European Union. Recently, however, there have been developments that could signal the beginning of a new dawn. In late 2019, the Higher Regional Court Munich confirmed the first anti-anti-suit injunction in German history. The court prohibited Continental from further…
On 23 October 2020, Japan and the United Kingdom (UK) signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the agreement coming into force on 1 January 2021. This signifies a historic landmark as the UK’s first trade deal as an independent nation, and represents a key milestone for international trade in a post-Brexit UK. The…
Egypt has been trying to control the number of investor-state arbitration disputes which has been steeply increasing since 2011 and the Arab Spring movement (see past discussion on the Blog here). To that end, Egypt created alternative out-of-court forums for amicable settlement of existing arbitration cases and worked toward curbing the eruption of new cases…
Nearly a decade ago, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (“PCA”) published its Optional Rules for Arbitration of Disputes Relating to Outer Space Activities (“PCA Outer Space Rules” or “Rules”). Unlike the five United Nations treaties on outer space, the Rules provide for a voluntary and binding dispute resolution process accessible to all space actors. Notably,…
The publication of the 60th volume of the International Arbitration Law Library Series (“IALL” or “Series”) is a remarkable anniversary. The purpose of this blog post is to offer a brief assessment of the Series’ contribution to the field in the light of the evolution of international arbitration’s scholarship in the last 40-50 years. It…
Professor Stavros Brekoulakis has written a blog post commemorating the 60th volume of Kluwer Law International’s International Arbitration Law Library Series (“Series”), of which he and I are co-editors. His blog post considered the Series’ contribution to the field in light of the evolution of international arbitration’s scholarship in the last 40-50 years. In particular,…
Brazil’s new data protection law, the Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD) (September 18, 2020), has important implications for international arbitration users and practitioners.1)On August 2018, the law was approved with an effective date of February 2020. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the effective date was postponed and the law came into force in…
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…
Knowledge of international arbitration has often been based on anecdotal evidence. However, there has been increasing interest in empirical research among practitioners and scholars. In the context of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, arbitral practice has rapidly changed and new empirical research aimed at understanding the experience and expectations of the users of international arbitration is…
For a long time, the word ‘environment’ occurred in the realm of arbitration only when disputes between parties had some connection to it. Lately, however, there has been a shift from environment only being a subject-matter specific issue in arbitrations to a more diverse theme of discussion among the global arbitration community. Credit for this…
On 5 May 2020, 23 Member States of the European Union (“EU”) signed an Agreement for the Termination of all Intra-EU Bilateral Investment Treaties (“Agreement”). Following ratification by the Kingdom of Denmark (6 May 2020) and Hungary (30 July 2020), the Agreement entered into force on 29 August 2020 (Article 16). The Agreement comes in…
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 recent decision of 9 October 2020 in Enka Insaat Ve Sanayi AS v OOO “Insurance Company Chubb” & Ors [2020] UKSC 38 (Enka), the UK Supreme Court upheld the decision of the England and Wales Court of Appeal earlier this year restraining Chubb Russia from proceeding with parallel court proceedings in Russia, but…
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…
