Introduction It is generally accepted in international arbitration that an arbitral tribunal has an inherent power, and duty, to preserve the fairness and integrity of the arbitral proceedings and the enforceability of the award. On the other hand, it is equally uncontested that a party to an arbitration has a right to be represented by…
The 5th Annual ITA-IEL-ICC Joint Conference on International Energy Arbitration was held in Houston last month, and the focus was on the year past and the year ahead in the arbitration of international disputes in the energy industry. From the topics discussed, predictions rendered and questions raised at the conference, attendees departed considering whether the…
There have been a number of occasions in Indonesia when domestic court proceedings and foreign arbitration proceedings of the same matter were carried out concurrently. In some of those occasions, the arbitral tribunal, upon the claimant’s request, issued an anti-suit injunction in respect of the Indonesian court proceedings brought by the respondent. In Astro Nusantara…
The views expressed herein are the personal views of the authors and do not reflect those of their law firm. In France, until recently, rules governing the issue of sovereign immunity from enforcement, and in particular those setting out the scope and conditions under which such immunities apply, derived from case law. Although relevant international…
The (Indian) Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 does not specify which disputes are arbitrable and which are not. The arbitrability of disputes is a contested issue and has been left for the courts to decide on a case-by-case basis. In Himangni Enterprises v. Kamaljeet Singh Ahluwalia (“Himangni Enterprises”), the arbitrability of disputes under a lease…
Founded 20 years ago, the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA) is a group of 17 African States who have joined efforts to enact unified legislation in all areas of business law in order to promote investments by fostering legal certainty across member States. The OHADA Treaty acknowledged the importance of…
Introduction Consolidation means combining two or more arbitrations that are pending under a specific set of rules into a single arbitration proceeding. In appropriate circumstances, consolidation has various advantages. Most importantly, it eliminates the risk of having contradictory awards rendered in different proceedings on closely related sets of facts. Additionally, it makes for procedural and…
The new arbitration rules of the German Institution of Arbitration (Deutsche Institution für Schiedsgerichtsbarkeit – “DIS”) will enter into force on 1 March 2018 (“DIS Rules 2018”). It is the first revision of the DIS Rules since the current version was adopted in 1998 (“DIS Rules 1998”). The revision process involved nearly 300 persons sitting…
In 2010, the Commercial Court of Paris created a specialised international and European court chamber in order to judge all international complex commercial cases in the first instance. Although French procedural rules continue to apply before this court chamber, evidence and oral debates can take place in a foreign language, if the judges and the…
In the first part of this article, we discussed the need to broaden the debate about the UK’s future trading relationships, touched upon some potential advantages of the UK joining the NAFTA and traced the idea’s limited history. Is there political will? These days, the idea remains on the periphery, even out of sight. Each…
To many, it would seem foolish even to ask whether the UK might join the North American Free Trade Agreement. Yet, the UK should explore all possibilities open in a post-Brexit world. As we explain, the idea that the UK might join the NAFTA is not only conceptually interesting, but also merits entertaining with a…
This post covers the main topics broached in my lecture given in Oxford, in the Conference “II Oxford Symposium on Comparative International Commercial Arbitration”, which took place on November 20, 2017. The question is: are arbitrators bound by precedents or by a clear line of case law, when parties have decided, in the arbitration agreement, that…
On 31 December 2017, Israel’s Supreme Court published an important precedential decision concerning enforcement procedures of ‘made in Israel’ commercial arbitral awards. In Request for Appeal 1739/17, Michael Flacks v. Stephan Bisk (in Hebrew), the Israeli Supreme Court denied a motion for service of process abroad in a petition to confirm an arbitration award issued…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has enforced an arbitration clause in a maritime insurance policy, finding the policy subject to the Federal Arbitration Act, and not “reverse preempted” by the McCarran-Ferguson Act. In so holding, the court determined that the policy’s choice-of-law clause and arbitration provision controlled over somewhat different language…
INTRODUCTION Germany is considered as one of the most arbitration friendly jurisdictions in Europe if not world-wide, not least because the 1998 arbitration law is almost a verbatim translation of the UNCITRAL Model law. This arbitration-friendliness always encompassed also corporate disputes, safe for one minor, but important exception: arbitrations concerning the validity of shareholder…
Increased investment in South East Asia has led to a growth in the supply and demand for dispute resolution services in the region. Indonesia is no exception, with disputes increasingly submitted to the Badan Arbitrase Nasional Indonesia (“BANI”) – the country’s most popular and well recognised arbitration centre. Recently however, BANI has seemingly split into…
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…
The present analysis critically focuses on some aspects of the Opinion on the intra-EU BITs issued by AG Wathelet in the Achmea case (Case C-284/16) in September 2017. The Opinion has been extensively commented on in previously published posts on this blog. As such posts have noted, the AG’s position that intra-EU BITs are…
The judicial review of arbitral awards has been a continuous topic of discussion amongst scholars and legislators. Considering the major effects of the seat of the arbitration in annulment proceedings, even when the arbitral award is in principle final and binding, local legislators are faced with the need to balance the aim of assuring the…
At the dawn of the New Year, foreign arbitration specialists will welcome some reassurance to the effect that the amendments made to the UAE Advocacy Law, also known as Federal Law No. (23) of 1991 on the Regulation of the Legal Profession, in November 2017 (see Ministerial Resolution No. (972) of 2017 on the Executive…
“Japan is Back”? Prime Minister Shinzo Abe himself is certainly back – having led the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to a fifth consecutive election in October 2017. If Abe remains in power for another three years, he will become the longest serving Japanese prime minister since World War II. Although the electorate probably responded…
Historic grandeur, impressive architecture, outstanding cultural offerings, natural beauty and diversity, good value for money, beauty, safety, timelessness… Austria truly has a lot going for itself. Yet, should this still not be enough to tempt arbitration users and practitioners around the globe, the new Arbitration and Mediation Rules of the Vienna International Arbitral Centre (VIAC)…
In a previous post, the issue of finality of arbitral awards in Nigeria was discussed and it was concluded that the review of awards is not in itself a vice to arbitration. In this post, I share further observations on the finality debacle with emphasis on the pro-finality judicial policy in Nigeria. Are our Criticisms…
Introduction Article 48.1 FAI Rules provides that, in any international arbitration, FAI shall fix an advance on costs which the parties must pay in full before the case file is transmitted to the arbitral tribunal. Like under many other institutional arbitration rules, the starting point under the FAI cost regime is that FAI will fix…
