There are two legal jurisdictions in Qatar with laws containing specific provisions related to arbitration: the State of Qatar and the Qatar Financial Center (the “QFC”). The latter is a separate jurisdiction with its own laws within the state. The QFC Law provides for the arbitration of commercial disputes in relation to contracts that have…
CIETAC’s Vice Chairman and Secretary General recently announced at a conference in London that CIETAC may soon permit parties to select arbitrators from outside the CIETAC list. As the CIETAC Rules currently allow parties to appoint off-list only if they have agreed to do so, this announcement suggests that CIETAC may in the future allow…
In a landmark provisional judgment in Democratic Republic of the Congo v. FG Hemisphere Associates FACV Nos. 5, 6 & 7 of 2010, the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (CFA) has held by a majority of 3:2 that absolute sovereign immunity applies in Hong Kong, with no exception for purely commercial transactions or assets….
As a journalist, I miss out on all the fun of nominating arbitrators. And I also refrain from counseling others as to whom they should nominate to arbitral tribunals. But, today I’d like to make an exception. Recently, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe engineered the effective demise of the regional tribunal of the Southern African Development…
The four most recent ICSID disqualification decisions (Universal Compression v. Venezuela, OPIC Karimum v. Venezuela, Tidewater v. Venezuela and Urbaser v. Argentina) have unanimously rejected applications to disqualify arbitrators on ICSID tribunals. This post addresses an issue raised in three of the most recent decisions—disqualification based on repeat appointments by the same party or counsel—and…
The seventh round of TPP negotiations will take place in Vietnam the week of June 20 but caution on the part of U.S. negotiators makes it highly unlikely that after fifteen months of ongoing negotiations any of the major issues will be resolved or even fully opened to discussion. In particular, the United States Trade…
There was no shortage of coverage of the recent English Supreme Court case Jivraj v Hashwani, the case concerning whether an arbitration clause was contrary to anti-discrimination legislation applicable to employees. But there was one issue which received little attention before the Supreme Court – whether or not the nature of the relationship between the…
I am posting this CIArb’s press release for the benefit of our readers: The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) has launched a major survey into the costs of international arbitration. The ‘Costs of Arbitration’ survey will gather data to inform parties, legal representatives and arbitrators about the overall costs of international commercial arbitration and how…
The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is not foreign to defending investment claims. In order to restore investors’ confidence in its country, the Pakistani government has enacted on April 28, 2011 a law to secure foreign investment. The International Investment Disputes Act (the “Act”) has been qualified by the Pakistani president, Mr. Asif Ali Zardari, as…
[Editor’s Note: The following blog is re-published free of editorial errors in the original publication.] In the current zeitgeist focusing on the need for efficiency and speed in arbitration, we are at risk of over-correcting to the point of diminishing important functions of the arbitral process. There is little doubt that the arbitral process generally…
I write this post on a train on the way home from a seminar held by the Milan Chamber of Arbitration (CAM) to introduce a new rule and guidelines that could be seen as a necessary next step in the trend towards greater efficiency in arbitration. Before commenting on where these new developments might take…
José Augusto Fontoura Costa of the São Paulo Law Faculty has just published a fascinating paper analyzing the process by which WTO panelists and ICSID arbitrators are nominated. What is most interesting about his thesis is that he offers a different conception of why we have elite arbitrators, but not an elite cadre of WTO…
Costa Rica has a new Arbitration Law, which is based on the 2006 version of the UNCITRAL Model Law. The relative speed with which the new Arbitration Law was adopted came as a surprise to many. Only a few months ago, at the Second International Arbitration Congress organized by the ICC Costa Rica in San…
In the current zeitgeist focusing on the need for efficiency and speed in arbitration, we are at risk of over-correcting to the point of diminishing important functions of the arbitral process. There is little doubt that the arbitral process generally has become too much like litigation, and needs to be more efficient and less costly….
The new Hong Kong Arbitration Ordinance (Cap. 609) (the “Ordinance”) comes into effect today, having been approved by the Hong Kong Legislative Council at the end of last year. The Ordinance represents the culmination of many years of discussion and consultation and marks a significant milestone in the development of Hong Kong as a world-class…
“…there are known knowns; these are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know” Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. One of…
In The Invisible Gorilla, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons explore a classic experiment that won them an Ig Nobel Prize (2004). Their research considers how our own perceptions and memories can fool us into thinking something is true (when it is false) or lead us to miss things that are far more profound. This research…
One of the key issues that now awaits the decision of the U.K. Supreme Court in Jivraj v. Hashwani is whether there is a contract between the parties and the arbitrators, such that the arbitrators may be considered “employees” of the parties (and thereby subject to the law prohibiting discrimination by employers)? If there is…
In a recent decision, the Swiss Supreme Court examined whether contractual provisions contemplating certain procedural steps before initiating arbitration proceedings impacted the jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunal (Case no. 4A_46/2011 of 16 May 2011, to be published in ASA Bulletin, 2011. English translation to be published in Swiss International Arbitration Law Reports, 2011). The contract,…
In the recent investment treaty case Alps Finance Trade AG v Slovak Republic, an UNCITRAL tribunal had to consider whether Alps had satisfied the obligation contained in Article 9 of the Switzerland-Slovakia BIT which requires that “consultations will take place” and that they “do not result in a solution within six months” before the matter…
The Singapore Court of Appeal issued a decision recently articulating a principled framework for the arbitrability of insolvency-related claims. It provides useful guidance on when an insolvency-related claim would be considered non-arbitrable under Singapore law. In seeking to strike the delicate balance between its robust pro-arbitration stance and its insolvency regime, the Court’s underlying philosophy…
On 27 April 2011, the US Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision (AT&T Mobility LLC v Concepcion (563 US ____ (2011) 17)), concluded that due to the principle of finality, arbitration would be “poorly suited” to cases where the stakes are particularly high (class actions in the instant case). The US Supreme Court added: “[w]e…
Whereto now, the Italian Torpedo? Just when you thought the English arbitral scene could deliver no more surprises (the decision of the ECJ in West Tankers; the pending decision of the UK Supreme Court in Jivraj v. Hashwani; the famed and controversial decision of the UK Supreme Court in Dallah), there comes what shall here…
As has been chronicled in previous postings, the 2008 decision of an ICSID arbitral tribunal to award $1 Million (US) in “moral damages” to an injured company has been eyed covetously by other investor-claimants in investment treaty disputes. Such sums may be “small change” compared to the more conventional forms of economic compensation claimed for…
