On February 2, 2024, the United States filed an amicus brief (the “Amicus”) responding to a request from the United States (“US”) Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to provide the US’ position regarding the enforcement of three “intra-EU” investment arbitration awards issued under the Energy Charter Treaty (“ECT”) against the Kingdom of Spain….

This Part 2 continues reflections on key arbitration-related developments in Canada during 2023. Whereas Part 1 addressed the courts’ approaches to arbitrator independence and impartiality and the unconscionability of arbitration agreements, this Part 2 shines light on different takes on procedural fairness and “fresh evidence” in post-award proceedings.   What is “Proper Notice”? The past…

Under Article 34 of the UNCITRAL Model Law (“Model Law”), an arbitral award may be set aside if the arbitration agreement is “not valid”. A more controversial issue is whether setting aside avenues should also be available in the opposite scenario, i.e., when a tribunal found that no valid arbitration agreement existed and declined jurisdiction….

In 2004, Chile enacted Law No. 19.971 on International Commercial Arbitration (“LACI”) based on the UNCITRAL Model Law of 1985 (“Model Law”). This note describes, without assessing its merits, how the process to resolve an application to set aside awards has evolved in practice in Chile (“Application for Set Aside” or “Application”), the sole remedy…

In 2013, Deutsche Telekom AG (“DT”), a German corporation, commenced an UNCITRAL arbitration in Switzerland under the Germany-India BIT claiming that India had (amongst other things) breached the fair and equitable treatment (“FET”) standard. In the arbitration, India raised various jurisdictional objections, which the Tribunal rejected in an Interim Award issued on 13 December 2017….

Making an awkward legislative step, the Hungarian legislator introduced a new ground for annulling construction arbitration awards from 5 June 2023, which applies where arbitrators fail to deliberate the opinion of a domestic expert body. While many commentators have criticised this amendment because of its potential retroactive effect and its disharmony with the current international…

In a recent decision, the Supreme Court of Western Australia (“WA”) Court of Appeal confirmed that courts have the conclusive authority to determine the jurisdiction of arbitral tribunals. The Commercial Arbitration Act 2012 (WA) (the “Act”) confers competence upon arbitral tribunals to determine their own jurisdiction. However, courts retain authority to review questions of jurisdiction….

This might not be a secret: the Singapore courts recently issued two decisions in June 2023 about confidentiality in the international arbitration context. The first, The Republic of India v Deutsche Telekom AG [2023] SGCA (I) 4 (“India v DT”), concerned the availability of court-ordered confidentiality protections after information about the arbitration (whose confidentiality is…

Under the Law on Commercial Arbitration 2010 (“LCA”), both domestic and international arbitral awards can be set aside on the basis that the arbitral award contravenes the “fundamental principles of Vietnamese law.” This concept, however, is undefined and broad, causing much uncertainty, especially in light of decisions of the Vietnamese courts. In 2020, the People’s…

Our previous post on this Blog explored the Polish post-award case law from 2020. We tried to answer whether Poland is an arbitration-friendly jurisdiction. And we concluded that out of the more than 200 proceedings we have been able to review, arbitral awards were set aside or refused enforcement / recognition only in a relatively…

On February 24, 2023, the Latvian Constitutional Court issued a long-awaited Judgement in case 2022-03-01 confirming that the current control mechanism over arbitration in Latvia is incomplete and unconstitutional. This means that the government will now be required to introduce a procedure for setting aside arbitral awards made by tribunals seated in Latvia.   Background…

On 10 January 2023, the Paris Court of Appeal (“Paris CoA”) set aside the 50+ million USD UNCITRAL award rendered in the dispute between Komstroy (before Energoalians LLC, and now Stileks Scientific and Production Firm LLC (“Stileks”)) and the Republic of Moldova. The referring court applied the ruling rendered by the Court of Justice of…

When determining what matters fall within the scope of submission to arbitration, five sources are relevant: the parties’ pleadings, the agreed list of issues, opening statements, evidence adduced, and closing submissions: CDM v CDP [2021] 2 SLR 235 at [18]. If a court, on an analysis of these five sources, finds that an award should…

Introduction The second day of the Asia ADR Week 2022 kicked off with a panel discussion on Rechartering a Modern Legislative Framework with Mr Abang Iwawan (Abang & Co.) as moderator. Mr Iwawan was joined by Ms Karen Ng Gek Suan (Karen, Mak & Partners), Mr Rajendra Navaratnam (Azman Davidson & Co.), Mr Foo Joon…

As most arbitration laws, the Brazilian Arbitration Act (Law n. 9307/1996; “BAL”) establishes a short deadline for any interested party to seek annulment of an arbitral award in court. The interested party has a 90-day period as from (i) notice of the partial or final arbitral award or (ii) the decision on a motion for clarification…

We are happy to inform you that the latest issue of the journal is now available and includes the following contributions:   Roger P. Alford, Crina Baltag, Matthew E.K. Hall and Monique Sasson, Empirical Analysis of National Courts Vacatur and Enforcement of International Commercial Arbitration Awards The empirical research in this article relies on a…

One of the articles authored by Dr Monique Sasson and featured in the Journal of International Arbitration Special Issue on Empirical Work in Commercial Arbitration, edited by Dr Monique Sasson, Dr Crina Baltag, Roger P. Alford, Matthew E.K. Hall, under the general editorship of Prof. Dr Maxi Scherer, discussed the public policy in the light…

On June 6, 2022, the Journal of International Arbitration Special Issue on Empirical Work in Commercial Arbitration, was released, edited by Dr Monique Sasson, Dr Crina Baltag, Roger P. Alford, Matthew E.K. Hall, under the general editorship of Prof. Dr Maxi Scherer. The Special Issue also includes articles authored by Prof. Loukas Mistelis, Prof. Dr…

International Law Talk is a series of podcasts through which Wolters Kluwer provides the latest news and industry insights from thought leaders and experts in the fields of International Arbitration, IP Law, International Tax Law and Competition Law.  Here at Kluwer Arbitration Blog, we highlight the podcasts focused on international arbitration.   In this latest episode, Prof….

As discussed on the Blog, the international chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal issued on 30 November 2021 a ruling in Boralex Energie France v. Innovent, on a set-aside request based on alleged irregularities related to the signing and dating of the award caused by the pandemic. To the authors’ knowledge, this decision is…

In 2021, Southeast Asia saw institutional progress, arbitration-related court decisions, and investment treaty developments. All in all, it was an eventful and, at times, surprising year for the region in terms of arbitration developments.   Institutional progress Some Southeast Asian arbitral institutions revamped and revised their arbitration rules as part of their strategic institutional development….

In the legal world, countless hours are spent choosing, weighing and defining words, expressions and phrases, and linguistic precision is instilled as a virtue from the first day of law school. It is therefore rather concerning when courts use both inaccurate and inapt language to address a specific issue, such as when Canadian courts consider…

On 1 December 2021, the Svea Court of Appeal in Stockholm rejected Kibar Enerji Anonim Sirketi’s request to set aside an arbitral award in a dispute with Gazprom Export LLC over contract pricing of natural gas. Kibar alleged that the arbitral tribunal had exceeded its mandate and had also committed a procedural error when issuing…

It is trite that an award may be set aside if there has been a breach of the rules of natural justice. This may arise from, among others, a tribunal’s procedural ruling. However, during the arbitration, there is no recourse for parties to challenge such procedural rulings. This was the situation in CBS v CBP…