The Pechstein decision of the Munich Court of Appeals (Oberlandesgericht) of January 15, 2015 has made headlines (see here and here). The Munich court refused to recognise an arbitral award of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), since it held the underlying arbitration agreement between Claudia Pechstein, the speed skater, and her sport’s governing…

I am grateful for the opportunity to introduce to the readers of this blog my new edited book: Litigating International Investment Disputes – A Practitioner’s Guide. International investment arbitration is increasingly complex and specialized, and this book seeks to guide new and experienced practitioners through the workings and details of international investment arbitration proceedings –…

We are pleased to announce that ICSID Secretary-General Meg Kinnear will be presenting a lecture on the “Next Generation of Investment Treaties and Their Impact on Investor-Dispute Settlement,” today (February 12) from 5:00 to 7:00 pm Eastern here at Kluwer Arbitration blog. You can watch the recorded presentation here. The event is sponsored by Notre…

A recent seminar delivered under the Chatham House Rule considered the usefulness of an analogy between Investment Treaty Arbitration (ITA) and domestic public law, with a view to critiquing perceived imbalances in the former. The content of the seminar was grounded in the speaker’s background in ITA and public law litigation including domestic judicial review…

and Oleg Temnikov Purpose of security for costs Security for costs falls into the category of provisional measures and is regulated by Article 47 of the ICSID Convention and Arbitration Rule 39. Its purpose is, inter alia to preserve the effectiveness of the award and the integrity of the proceeding by protecting the requesting party’s…

In 2013, an extensive survey of experienced commercial arbitrators in the U.S. was conducted by the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution with the cooperation of the College of Commercial Arbitrators (CCA), an organization of more than two hundred of the most experienced arbitrators in the U.S. The Survey provides considerable new data on arbitrators’ experiences,…

The current state of affairs of arbitration within Latin America looks challenging. Many countries are having upcoming ICSID awards which could amount to tens of billions of dollars against them. Most international bonds have a final judgment event of default (EoD), which could lead to a default bond scenario on the sovereign debt of such…

and Paul Tan, Jawad Ahmad and Victor Steinmetz, Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP In what marks the first time where a Singapore court reviews an investment arbitral tribunal’s jurisdiction, the High Court held in Government of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic v Sanum Investments Ltd [2015] SGHC 15 that, contrary to the tribunal’s findings, the…

and Mitchell Moranis, WilmerHale As discussed recently in this forum, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties is the prevailing mechanism for the interpretation of investment treaties (Interpreting Investment Treaties, Roberto Castro de Figueiredo, 21 Oct. 2014). The Vienna Convention, however, was adopted in May 1969. According to the ICSID Database of Bilateral Investment…

The HKIAC has recently updated its 2005 Procedures for the Administration of Arbitration under the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules (the 2005 Procedures). This is one of several measures the HKIAC has taken in recent years to refine and improve its arbitration offerings. The new procedures incorporate both innovations in HKIAC practice and recent revisions to the…

One of the fundamental issues of investment cases – apparently more frivolous than the strictly legal battles – takes the form of debates over the applicable compensation standard. Historically speaking, the problem was mainly put forth for breaches of Bilateral Investment Treaties that referred to expropriatory behaviors of signatory states. Therefore, if this specific type…

By virtue of a recent Decree (see Decree No. (47) of 2014 Reshuffling the Board of Trustees of the Dubai International Arbitration Center, issued in Dubai on 7 December 2014), HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Ruler of Dubai, has appointed Dr. Habib Al Mulla, founder of former Habib Al Mulla & Co,…

The IBA recently revised its Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration. This was the culmination of a review by the IBA Arbitration Committee, which began in 2012. The salient changes address the rise of advance declarations by arbitrators; third-party funding; increasing significance of arbitral secretaries; and the possibility that an arbitrator, and counsel…

The Inaugural Conference of the European Federation for Investment Law and Arbitration (EFILA) took place on Friday, 23 January 2015, in the Senate House of the Queen Mary University of London. 160 participants ranging from academics, arbitrators, arbitration institutions, companies, lawyers to NGOs reviewed a full day long the EU’s first 5 years of European…

Although a bilateral investment treaty (“BIT”) arbitration and an application made before the European Court of Human Rights (“the Court”) could, at first glance, present opposite objectives, investors alleging a violation of their rights by a State may be inclined to make use of both remedies. As it will be elaborated below, the case law…

The controversial role of non-disputing parties has been the object of a significant amount of literature. While third party funding was a hot topic hitherto, the so-called amicus curia, and its evolving role, might be back in the spotlight. Since the first ICSID amicus case -the Bechtel case- until today, the rights, interests at stake…

In article 35 of the Brazilian Arbitration Law (“BAA”) it states that, in order to be enforced in Brazil, a foreign arbitral award (i.e., an award issued outside Brazil’s territory) must be recognized by the judiciary. This judicial recognition rests with the Superior Tribunal of Justice (Superior Tribunal de Justiça – “STJ”), which retains exclusive…

That was the assessment of Constantine Partasides QC, founding partner of Three Crowns, during his keynote address to the joint ITA-IEL conference. According to Mr. Partasides, there is a developing consensus among states that it is acceptable, and even virtuous, to challenge investor-state arbitration as an infringement on the rights of the public to pass…

and David Mamane and Hannah Boehm, Schellenberg Wittmer With its interim judgment of 15 January 2015, the Higher Regional Court of Munich added a new chapter to the longstanding legal dispute between the German speed skater Claudia Pechstein and the International Skating Union (“ISU”) (see the previous report on this story). The full decision has…

and Alex Wiker, Dickinson School of Law On January 14, the Pilot Project for Arbitrator Intelligence—whose launch was first announced here on the Kluwer Blog—came to an official close. We could not be more pleased with the Pilot results, which we will share with readers below. But first, a bit of background about the methodology…

The split between CIETAC headquarters in Beijing and its two former Shanghai and Shenzhen sub-commissions following the adoption of CIETAC’s 2012 Arbitration Rules has remained in the spotlight. The feud escalated with the assertion of independence by the two sub-commissions and the revocation by headquarters of their authorisation to administer cases. To add to the…

co-authored by Georg von Segesser and Mirina Grosz, Schellenberg Wittmer Ltd. In a recent decision, the Swiss Federal Tribunal rejected an appeal to set aside a final award of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (“CAS”) (Decision of the Swiss Federal Tribunal (“DFT”) of 11 June 2014, 4A_178/2014). The appellant, a professional cyclist who faced…

This article is published as a result of the cooperation agreement between  Kluwer Arbitration Blog and 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. In 2010 Australia amended its International Arbitration Act (Cth) 1974 (IAA)…

In the recent case of Pricol v. Johnson Controls (Pricol Limited v. Johnson Controls Enterprises Ltd and Ors, Arbitration Case (Civil) No.30 of 2014), the Supreme Court of India declined to intervene in an international arbitration with the SIAC as appointing authority, upholding the parties’ chosen mechanism in a well-reasoned decision which was marked by…