In a blog earlier this year, I reported in some detail on the Dubai-DIFC Judicial Committee’s first decision in Daman v. Oger (see Cassation No. 1/2016 (JT) – Daman Real Capital Partners Company LLC v. Oger Dubai LLC, hearing of 19 December 2016, published by the JT in both English and Arabic). By way of…
As in García-Marquez’s novel, the denunciation of the Ecuadorian bilateral investment treaties (“BITs”) represents a chronicle of a death foretold and the Ecuadorian National Assembly and Ecuador’s President have taken one of the final steps to terminate them. Along the way, the internal termination proceedings have been highly politicized, international investment arbitration has been demonized,…
The recent mention of “judicial economy” in the award in Eli Lilly and Company v. Government of Canada provides an opportunity to consider judicial economy in investor-state arbitration more generally. In its award of March 16, 2017, the Eli Lilly tribunal determined that certain judicial interpretations of Canada’s patent law did not violate the substantive…
International arbitration takes a great pride in being flexible, adjustable and thus very responsive to the needs of the parties involved. Indeed, in terms of international arbitration imagination has virtually no limits – nothing really prevents parties to an arbitration agreement from agreeing on an arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules, in the Spanish…
One of the most significant changes that the new Russian Arbitration Law introduced, which has been in force for past eight months, relates to the requirement of Governmental authorization for establishing an arbitral institution (more discussion on this can be found in some of previous KAB posts available here, here, here). In particular, the Russian…
Expedited arbitration procedure, which allows procedural streamlining of arbitration proceedings, became widely accepted by arbitration institutions. The ICC followed this global trend by incorporating Expedited Procedure Rules into the ICC Rules which came into force on 1 March 2017 (see here). The incorporation of expedited procedures is a response to the need to control the…
In October 2016, the ICSID advised the Member States of the ICSID Convention that it was beginning the fourth amendment process since the enactment of the definitive ICSID Arbitration Rules in 1967. The first amendment to the Rules took place in 1984 and mainly referred to the possibility to resort to national courts for provisional…
On April 28, 2017, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (in a majority decision) affirmed the district court’s decision to set aside an award issued by a sole arbitrator finding that the award violated public policy. The award was rendered in the context of mandatory arbitration of statutory claims under the…
In many ways, Portugal is a remarkable arbitration-friendly jurisdiction. Not only a new UNICTRAL Model based law has been enacted a few years back now, but also its courts have proved to be very supportive of arbitration. The deference that they have been showing to the validity of the arbitration clause inserted in derivatives master…
On 11 January 2017, the Swiss Federal Council proposed a revised version of the Swiss International Private Law Act (“SPILA”) relating to international arbitration (art. 176 et seq.) with a view to increasing the attractiveness of Switzerland as a place of arbitration while preserving the concise, liberal and flexible traits of the SPILA. More precisely,…
On March 14th the Investment Treaty Forum at The British Institute of International and Comparative Law hosted a panel of experts to discuss practical and legal aspects of investments protection in the context of territorial disputes. Territorial disputes sometimes lead to the annexation of the territory of one state by another, of which the annexation…
On March 9, 2017, a three-person ICSID Tribunal rendered an Award in Ansung Housing Co., Ltd. v. People’s Republic of China. The case marks the second time where China appears as a Respondent before an ICSID tribunal. The first case was brought by a Malaysian company in May 2011, but that case was discontinued on…
As reported in the excellent piece by Alejandro López Ortiz and Gustavo Fernandes in “A Year of Legal Developments for International Arbitration in Latin America”, Bolivia may have taken a step back in State arbitration with the passing of its new act on arbitration in 2015. The article remarks the limitations to arbitrability introduced by…
On December 30, 2016, the Supreme People’s Court (“SPC”) issued a set of new Opinions. It covers an array of matters relating to legal measures to expedite the development of Free Trade Zones. (Opinions on Providing Judicial Protection for the Construction of Pilot Free Trade Zones, December 30, 2016). Among other matters, the SPC sought…
On 22 March 2017, with minimal fanfare, the Civil Law and Justice Amendment Legislation Bill 2017 (“2017 Bill”) was introduced into the upper house of the federal Parliament. Buried within this omnibus Bill were four proposed reforms to the International Arbitration Act (IAA), renamed as such in 1989 when Australia was one of the first…
The question of whether the jurisdictional grant in a “service of suit” clause overrides an otherwise valid and enforceable arbitration clause in the same agreement has been addressed by several courts in the United States. See McDermott Int’l, Inc. v. Lloyds Underwriters of London, 944 F.2d 1199 (5th Cir. 1991); Neca Ins., Ltd. v. Nat’l…
Here in London, it seems there is no end to the number of Brexit conferences one may attend. But as far as I know, there has yet to be one addressing the question of whether Brexit may give rise to viable investment arbitration claims against the United Kingdom. So on May 30, 2017 the University…
The ability of a party to obtain urgent interim relief is central to the efficacy of any method of dispute resolution. In case of disputes that are subject to an arbitration agreement, until recently parties had only two options: either approach national courts for interim relief in support of the arbitration, or wait for the…
In early March 2017, the Singapore High Court released a judgment in which it considered an important question of enforcement of investor-state awards. In Josias Van Zyl v Kingdom of Lesotho [2017] SGHCR 2, AR Pereira was asked to decide whether an order to enforce a final award in a treaty dispute administered by the…
In international arbitration, as in other fields of law, the divide between private and public—commercial arbitration and public international (including investment) arbitration—traditionally has been the generally, if uncritically, accepted belief. When public bodies are involved in commercial contracts, the traditional point of distinction has been whether the state operated jure imperii or jure gestionis. Apart…
It is hard to put into words the sheer magnitude of the Vis Moot, let alone how it feels to win such a prestigious and challenging competition. While we cannot begin to describe the emotions experienced during the six months leading up to the University of Ottawa’s victory, nor the feelings we continue to experience…
Introduction Western Australia has many of the hallmarks of an arbitral hub: from a stable liberal democracy, a reliable and predictable judiciary, and very low rates of corruption, to offices of numerous national and international law firms, world-standard business hotels (albeit only a recent arrival), and an efficient international airport (again, only of late, but…
The obligation for an arbitral tribunal to deliberate before rendering an award is at the heart of the arbitral process. In fact, parties typically agree to submit their disputes to a panel of three arbitrators for the purpose of ensuring objectivity, well thought decisions and equal treatment. Deliberation is so fundamental to the arbitral procedure…
A group of lawyers has been coveted in recent years by the most prestigious law firms. They are supposed to predict results more accurately than Gary Born, create more persuasive stories than Stanimir Alexandrov and even issue better awards than Gabrielle Kauffman-Kohler. Their names are Watson, Ross, Lex Machina and Compas – they are Machine…
