A July 2015 decision of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (Tribunal Superior de Justicia), the competent court to decide on the setting aside of an award when the seat of the arbitration is Madrid, declared non-arbitrable a controversy between two multinational Spanish operators in the natural gas sector. The dispute arose over the…
By: Kiran N. Gore and Alexandros Diplas The Blog recently featured a book review of the recently published Challenges and Recusals of Judges and Arbitrators in International Courts and Tribunals, edited by Professor Chiara Giorgetti of University of Richmond Law School. This review was a timely follow up to the December 10, 2015 book launch…
This is Part II of a previous blog, discussing a recent Award dated 27 October 2015 rendered in ICSID Case No. ARB/11/33 – Adel A Hamadi Al Tamimi v. Sultanate of Oman and dismissing all claims against Oman (see Part I of the blog). By way of reminder, the claims brought in these ICSID proceedings…
By a Final Award dated 27 October 2015 (see ICSID Case No. ARB/11/33 – Adel A Hamadi Al Tamimi v. Sultanate of Oman), an international tribunal constituted under the International Convention for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), also commonly referred to as the Washington Convention, dismissed all claims brought by a US national against the…
by Nikos Lavranos, European Federation for Investment Law and Arbitration (EFILA) Whereas all the attention in the TTIP-debate has been focusing on the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions and, more recently, on the proposal of the European Commission for the creation of an investment court system (ICS), the proposed energy chapter – with potentially much…
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and should not be regarded as representative of, or binding upon ArbitralWomen and/or the author’s law firm. On 12 November 2015, the European Commission rendered public and put on the negotiation table with the United States a proposal regarding the investment chapter of…
by Maria Laura Marceddu, School of Law, King’s College London Over the last years, as discussed on this blog (see here), there have been many interesting developments in the field of transparency in investor-State arbitration: the 2006 ICSID amendments, the 2013 UNCITRAL Rules on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor-State Arbitration (“the 2013 UNCITRAL Rules”) (see here), and…
As we settle in to enjoy the delights of the season and mark the end of another calendar year, we might ponder: What if Charles Dickins’ Ghost of Christmas Present went back to visit the international arbitration practitioners of 1995? The specter’s account of international arbitration today would certainly be unbelievable to our professional predecessors…
The Indian Government recently promulgated two ordinances (i.e., the Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts Ordinance (“Ordinance”) and the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Ordinance (“Arbitration Ordinance” – an analysis of the Arbitration Ordinance by the authors is available here), that will have a far-reaching impact on the practice of arbitration…
Amir Matar Associate, Sarie El Din & Partners Legal Advisors & Founding member of the Arab Legal Forum On 12 November, fifteen of the foremost arbitration specialists in the world met in Cairo to discuss the future of arbitration in the Euro-Mediterranean area (comprising, collectively, the European Union (EU) and Middle East and North African (MENA)…
Challenges of arbitrators seem to have become increasingly common in international investment arbitral proceedings, yet they also seem to be seldom successful. Challenges and Recusals of Judges and Arbitrators in International Courts and Tribunals, a new edited volume by Chiara Giorgetti, analyses arbitrators and judges’ challenges and addresses some fundamental, related questions: What does the…
by Catherine H. Gibson (Assistant Editor for North America) The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement (official text here) is one in a series of significant investment agreements that the United States will negotiate in the coming months and years – next in line are the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP) Agreement and the United States-China bilateral…
by Daniela Páez-Salgado, Herbert Smith Freehills (Assistant Editor for South America) On November 2, 2015, an ICSID-appointed Committee issued its Decision on Annulment in Occidental v Ecuador (Occidental Petroleum Corporation and Occidental Exploration and Production Company v. Republic of Ecuador, ICSID Case No. ARB/06/11). The Committee rejected twelve of the thirteen grounds for annulment raised…
by Nahila Cortes, American University Washington College of Law Much is being said about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (“TPP”), the landmark free trade agreement signed by twelve States accounting for 40% of the world trade. Chapter 9, the investment chapter, is an important provision which applies to investors (i.e. a national or company of a…
by Esmé Shirlow (Assistant Editor for Australia & New Zealand) Gabriele Ruscalla has recently observed that “transparency has become a fundamental principle in international adjudication”. The transparency paradigms governing different types of international adjudication are, however, far from uniform. Discussions of transparency in international arbitration typically begin, for example, from a distinction between commercial and investment treaty disputes. As Cristoffer Nyegaard Mollestad explains…
According to the last “Scoreboard” published by the European Commission in 2015 regarding the civil justice system in each Member State, the average length of first instance proceedings in Italy is 608 days. Only Cyprus and Malta take more time to reach a decision. As if this was not enough, the number of proceedings which…
Third party funding (“TPF”) has attracted a great deal of attention from the legal community, as it offers significant advantages and poses serious risks for international arbitration. Besides guaranteeing access to justice for those who are financially incapable of bearing the costs of an arbitration proceeding, the funded party will most certainly benefit from limiting…
by Anja Havedal Ipp, Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce A year into the sanctions regime, the arbitration community is trying to assess and predict its impact on Russia-related arbitration. Some commentators have drawn somewhat exaggerated conclusions. An October 22 post at the Kluwer Arbitration Blog, for example, talked about Russia’s “seismic shift” toward…
The approach of the Kingdom of Thailand to international arbitration has undergone significantly different phases over time. These phases have ranged from support to scepticism. Recent developments, however, may signal a bright future for international arbitration in the Kingdom of Thailand and possibly the end of the journey on a winding tollway. The Kingdom…
Michael P. Daly is a Visiting Scholar at George Washington Law School and Legal Adviser to Charles N. Brower and Jawad Ahmad is a Legal Adviser at the Iran-US Claims Tribunal. The views expressed in this post are the authors’ alone. On 2 December 2015 after more than three years of negotiations, the European…
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and should not be regarded as representative of, or binding upon ArbitralWomen and/or the author’s chambers. The legal landscape in Latin America is rapidly changing. Not only has Latin America more bilateral Trade Agreements than any other region in the world, but it…
by Gary Born, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP Preliminarily, I am delighted to report on the publication, this month, of the Second Edition of International Arbitration: Law and Practice (2d ed. Kluwer 2015). For readers who are interested in the book, click here. More importantly, I am also delighted to report, in my…
by Sonja Heppner, Trinity College Dublin, School of Law The text of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (‘TPP’) as agreed upon between the United States and Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam on 5 October 2015 provides for public arbitral hearings. The approach taken by the prospective signatories of…
Volume 32 (2015) Issue 6 contains: ARTICLES SECTION Bernard HANOTIAU, Non-signatories, Groups of Companies and Groups of Contracts in Selected Asian Countries: A Case Law Analysis Abstract: More than one-third of all international arbitration cases filed these recent years have involved issues of non-signatories, groups of companies or groups of contracts. The scenarios are diverse,…
