Arbitral Tribunal, Hearings, Investment Arbitration, New York Convention, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Transparency in investment arbitrations

(Trinity College Dublin, School of Law)/ /2 Comments

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…

Journal of International Arbitration

(ArbBoutique & Queen Mary University of London)/ /Leave a comment

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,…

Discovery, Document Production, Willem C. Vis Moot

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by Reto Marghitola, Vischer AG Document production, the topic of my new book, is a permanent issue in international arbitration. Now, it has even entered the fictional world of the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot. Document production is an important subject matter of this year’s competition. Many of the readers of this post…

Annulment, BIT, Ecuador, ICSID Arbitration, ICSID Convention, Investment Arbitration

(Flor & Hurtado)/ /Leave a comment

by Juan Carlos Herrera Q. Puente & Asociados In the middle of a short holiday, the Ecuadorian Government anxiously expected the Decision on Annulment issued by the Ad-hoc Committee regarding the investment arbitration initiated by Oxy. On November 2nd, 2015, the ICSID published on its web site the Decision and this event provoked a major…

Arbitration, Investment Arbitration, Treaty, Treaty Interpretation

(London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Law)/ /5 Comments

by Velimir Živković, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Law Imagine that in the heyday of post-Cold War period State A concluded a number of bilateral investment treaties (”BITs”) with a number of countries. Due to a variety of factors, these lay dormant for decades as State A is not exposed to investor…

Arbitration institution, Arbitration Institutions and Rules, Bosnia and Herzegovina

(University of Aberdeen)/ /Leave a comment

1. Introduction There is no precise information as to when the Arbitration Court attached to the Foreign Chamber of Commerce of Bosnia and Herzegovina was established (Arbitration Court). There is some sporadic information according to which the Arbitration Court was established in the post Second World War period, but at that time the Arbitration Court’s…

Ad hoc arbitration, Arbitration, Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration Awards, Arbitration Proceedings, Commercial Arbitration, Enforcement, Georgia, kompetenz-kompetenz, Set aside an arbitral award

(Hogan Lovells)/ /1 Comment

In 2009, Georgia adopted a new Law on Arbitration (“Law on Arbitration”) based on the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration with amendments as adopted in 2006 (“Model Law”). Shortly thereafter, Mr. Michael Wietzorek commented on the implementation of the new law on the Kluwer Arbitration Blog (here) and qualified this as a “significant…

Courts, India

(Fangda Partners) and / /1 Comment

Any discussion on the Indian Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (the “Act“) is incomplete without a reference to the scope of judicial interference introduced by the Supreme Court of India (the “SCI“) through its judgment of Bhatia International v. Union of India (2002 4 SCC 105) (“Bhatia International“). Two judgments of the SCI, dated 28…

Cambodia, Moot Courts

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ArbitralWomen

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. A few weeks ago, a small team of educators gathered in Phnom Penh for the second Vis East Moot Foundation1)Vis East Moot Foundation Ltd, registered Hong…

Appeal, Applicable Law, Arbitration, Arbitration Proceedings, Croatia, Small claims

(University of Aberdeen)/ /Leave a comment

In January 2015, a new arbitration institution, under somewhat ambiguous name of the Civil Arbitration Court (“Parnični arbitražni sud”) [“CAC”], was established. The program and rules provided by the CAC reveal its dedication to provide parties with an alternative forum for the resolution of disputes related to small claims, as in accordance with the principles…

Corruption

(FERRERE Abogados)/ /2 Comments

It has been some time since Judge Gunnar Lagergren – 52 years precisely – arbitrated a case (ICC No. 1110) whose underlying contract involved an agreement to pay bribes, and where he proffered a landmark award holding that “a case such as this, involving such gross violation of good morals and international public policy, can…

Ad hoc arbitration, BIT, Dispute Resolution, Investment Arbitration, Investment protection, Investor, ISDS, Jurisdiction, Jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunal, Uncategorized

(Australian National University)/ /Leave a comment

As Mariel Dimsey has observed, a key challenge posed by investment treaties is that – at the point of ratification – they expose States to arbitrations of ‘as-yet-unknown scope and against as-yet-unknown claimants’. Gus van Harten and Martin Loughlin argue that this feature differentiates investment disputes from those heard in other fora, transforming investment disputes into something akin to ‘domestic judicial review of state conduct’….

Arbitration, Arbitration Awards, Consent awards, Enforcement, Settlement

(British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL))/ /Leave a comment

In September 2015 the UNCITRAL Working Group II (Arbitration and Conciliation) continued its work on formulating legal framework on the enforcement of settlement agreements, including a convention, model provisions or guidance texts. Currently, parties can request arbitration tribunals to record their settlement agreements as consent awards, i.e. an arbitral award on terms agreed upon by…

Ethics, Uncategorized

(Schellenberg Wittmer)/ /3 Comments

The Swiss Arbitration Association (“ASA”) has called recently for the creation of a transnational body, the Global Arbitration Ethics Council, to whom matters of alleged unethical conduct would be referred. This entity would provide a truly global solution to a global problem and overcome one of the main criticisms levelled against both the IBA Guidelines…

ICSID Convention, Iraq

(Armstrong Teasdale)/ /Leave a comment

The Middle East is undergoing a period of extreme political, economic and social unrest. In modern Iraq, the chaos wrought by Da’esh is causing major difficulties for the government and for ordinary businesses and individuals. However, in the midst of this turmoil, on 18 November 2015, Iraq finally made good its promise by ratifying the…

DIFC, Dubai, LCIA Rules

(Blanke Arbitration LLC)/ /Leave a comment

Following a recent announcement of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) (see https://www.lcia.org//News/difc-lcia-arbitration-centre-relaunched-today.aspx), its Dubai-based sister organisation, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC)-LCIA Arbitration Centre, re-launched its operations from a new location in the DIFC with effect from 18 November 2015. The move to the DIFC Gate Building, which has become an iconic landmark…

ICSID Arbitration, ISDS, UN Transparency Convention

(University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law )/ /Leave a comment
Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA)

The issue of transparency is hardly a new topic in legal scholarship addressing international arbitration. Last year, in an important contribution to this blog, Loukas A. Mistelis broke with the conventional wisdom that investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, is in need of court-like transparency, arguing that extending court-like transparency to arbitration “would not benefit the…

Arbitration, Bribery, Corruption, Croatia, Investment Arbitration

(Georgetown University Law Center)/ /3 Comments

In the landscape of international investment arbitration the allegations of corruption have become more and more common. Confronted with investor’s claims before an arbitral tribunal, host states employ all possible legal arguments available to avoid potential liability and the subsequent payment of compensation. Investor’s corrupt acts have emerged as a potentially viable state defense in…

Arbitration, Arbitration Act, CJEU, Intellectual Property Rights, Portugal

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It is fair to say that arbitration is already a widespread dispute mechanism in Portugal, broadly used not only for commercial disputes but also for disputes in other areas such as, for example, consumer, administrative and tax disputes. As for intellectual property, the possibility of submitting disputes to arbitration has been a reality in Portugal…

Arbitration, Lithuania, Public Policy

(Motieka & Audzevicius)/ /Leave a comment

Public policy remains one of the most popular grounds used by the parties to oppose the recognition and enforcement of an arbitral award. Its vague content also makes its application in court greatly challenging – academics still refer to public policy as the “unruly horse”. This creates a significant responsibility for the courts to find…

Arbitration, Investment Arbitration, ISDS

(NL-Investmentconsulting)/ /14 Comments

Recently, Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and Columbia University professor, warned about the dangers of TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership). “We know we’re going to need regulations to restrict the emissions of carbon,” Stiglitz said. “But under these provisions, corporations can sue the government, including the American government, by the way, so it’s all the governments…

Annulment, Antitrust arbitration, Award Scrutiny, CJEU, Competition Law, Enforcement, Europe, European Law, European Union, Gas Supply Agreements, ICC Rules, New York Convention, Ordre Public, Review on the merits

(Blanke Arbitration LLC)/ /Leave a comment

A ruling of the Austrian Supreme Court, the Oberste Gerichtshof in Vienna, Austria, of earlier this year (see ruling of 18 February 2015, 2 Ob 22/14w) raises anew the much debated question of the type and intensity of supervisory court review of European Union (EU) competition law awards. Readers may recall that EU competition law…

Arbitration, BIT, Investment, Investment agreements, Investment Arbitration, Investment protection, Investor, ISDS

(WongPartnership LLP)/ /1 Comment
YSIAC

“ISDS” (short for “investor-state dispute settlement”) was a less-known acronym some years back. Now, it has been given an increasingly bad name, no doubt fuelled by Vattenfall’s claim against Germany following the shutting down of its nuclear plants after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, tobacco giant Philip Morris’ high profile claims arising from Australia’s plain-labelling laws,…

Arbitration Act, India

(Arista Chambers)/ /2 Comments

The recently promulgated Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Ordinance 2015 (the “Ordinance”) marks a significant change in the arbitration landscape of India. Most significantly, the Ordinance (a statutory enactment in exercise of an extraordinary power granted to the President to act when the parliament is not in session) seeks to restrain judicial intervention in arbitration and…