The Kingdom of Tonga is dedicated to furthering the development of arbitration. A little more than a year ago, this blog published a post reporting that Tonga had acceded to the New York Convention on 12 June 2020. The New York Convention came into force for Tonga on 10 September 2020, and exactly three months…
This entry is the last in a series of three regarding issues faced by arbitral and financial institutions as a result of restrictions on transfers of funds under primary and secondary sanctions programmes. In the first post, the authors addressed the impact of asset freezes on arbitral institutions and their banks, while the second post…
Benno Kimmelman is an independent arbitrator and active in the New York arbitration community. He teaches international arbitration and international litigation courses at Brooklyn Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, and American University’s Washington College of Law. Edna Sussman is a New York-based arbitrator and mediator. She is the Distinguished ADR Practitioner in Residence at…
On November 15, 2021, the AAA-ICDR hosted a webinar entitled “In-House Counsel’s Virtual Roundtable” as part of New York Arbitration Week. The webinar focused on the use of alternative dispute resolution in the oil and gas industry. The panel was moderated by Eric P. Tuchmann, the Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for…
On November 16, 2021, during New York Arbitration Week 2021, several committees of the New York City Bar Association hosted a panel discussion entitled “Dispelling Myths: Enforcement of Latin American Arbitration Awards in the United States and U.S. Arbitration Awards in Latin America,” which focused on enforcement of foreign arbitral awards in the United States,…
During New York Arbitration Week 2021, the New York International Arbitration Center (“NYIAC”) and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (“CIArb”) New York branch hosted two panels dedicated to the theme of “Getting It Right in International Arbitration.” This post presents some highlights. Getting it Right: How Arbitrators, Counsel, and Institutions Can Improve the Quality…
This year’s theme for the New York Arbitration Week (“NYAW”) was “getting it right.” It invited ArbitralWomen and the Young International Arbitration Practitioners of New York (YIAP-NY), the latter in partnership with the New York International Arbitration Center (NYIAC), to reflect on the challenges but also new opportunities that the past year has presented to…
The Editorial Board of Kluwer Arbitration Blog announces the opening of the following position with Kluwer Arbitration Blog: Assistant Editor for Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. The Assistant Editor reports directly to the coordinating Associate Editor and is expected to (1) collect, edit and review guest submissions from the designated region for posting…
At the time the New York Convention (1958) and the UNCITRAL Model Law (1985) were being drafted, the possibility of sophisticated technology rather than natural persons running and controlling an arbitration must have seemed far-fetched. But, at the same time, the language employed in both the Convention and the Model Law did not expressly exclude…
Subscribers to KluwerArbitration.com enjoy access to the ICCA Yearbook Commercial Arbitration. A new upload of materials for the 2021 volume of ICCA’s Yearbook Commercial Arbitration is now available on the KluwerArbitration website. The upload consists of 22 decisions from 15 countries and includes, among others, an update of Belarusian jurisprudence on the 1958 New York…
In a recent judgment of the General Court (the “GC”) in joined cases – T-639/14 RENV, T-352/15 and T-740/17, the question of the clash between EU law (in this case, state aid legislation) and arbitration was discussed. Not surprisingly, from an EU law standpoint, the EU Courts once again found that in case of such…
Most international arbitration institutions have already adopted regulations concerning the roles of tribunal secretaries and scope of their duties. Although this topic has not been on the radar for some time now, several incoming court decisions are likely to reverse this trend. This post sets out a few critical views on the current practice in…
On 27 October 2021, Young ITA organised an event on the topic of “The Psychology of Witness Evidence and its Role in Tribunal Decision-Making”, hosted by Allen & Overy in London. Katrina Limond (Young ITA UK Chair, Allen & Overy London) and Robert Bradshaw (Young ITA UK Vice-Chair, Lalive London) led a roundtable discussion panelled…
In June 2020, the Swiss Arbitration Association (ASA) launched its much-awaited Arbitration Toolbox, an online and interactive tool that guides a user through the various stages of an arbitration. Initially the brainchild of former ASA President, Elliott Geisinger, the Toolbox was brought to fruition under the presidency of the current ASA President Felix Dasser. The…
The EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), agreed in principle in December 2020, was announced with great fanfare. Forged after seven years of negotiations between the world’s current largest trading block (the EU) and the country expected to have the world’s largest economy by the end of this decade (China), the CAI was set to…
This post shares a development of potential significance, i.e., the drafting of the Sustainable Investment Facilitation & Cooperation Agreement (SIFCA), a next-generation model bilateral investment treaty (BIT) developed for The Gambia, a sovereign State in West Africa and one of the world’s least developed countries (LDCs). This post continues the discussion raised in January 2021,…
It is no secret that Indian courts have previously faced criticism over their excessive interference in arbitral awards. However, there has been a course-correction in recent years, through legislation and judicial decisions. With the 2015 amendments to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (“Act”), it is clear that judicial scrutiny of arbitral awards should be…
On 20 October 2021, the Bucharest International Arbitration Court (“BIAC”) and the American Arbitration Association – International Centre for Dispute Resolution (“ICDR”) held a conference on the latest arbitration trends and the new ICDR International Dispute Resolution Procedures (“Conference”). The Conference kicked off with a welcome speech by Annet van Hooft (FCIArb, BIAC Honorary President,…
British Columbia (“BC”) was the first Canadian jurisdiction to introduce modern arbitration legislation based on international standards in the UNCITRAL Model Law in 1986. Despite being an early leader in arbitration in Canada, BC did not update its domestic legislation for over two decades, which caused some increasing discrepancies between BC’s arbitration legislation, the UNCITRAL…
Arbitration agreements often provide that certain procedural steps must be undertaken before arbitration is commenced, such as mediation or negotiation. This provides a ‘cooling-off period’ in which the parties can seek to resolve their dispute amicably before resorting to formal proceedings. When a party fails to satisfy a pre-arbitration procedural step and launches prematurely into…
In CLMS Mgmt. Servs. et al. v. Amwins Brokerage et al., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit considered whether a state law (by operation of the federal McCarran-Ferguson Act, which gives states the authority to regulate the business of insurance) voiding arbitration agreements in insurance contracts reverse-preempted Article II, Section 3 of…
On 12 October 2021, the Africa Arbitration Academy organized its annual debate themed “Battle of the Titans” as part of its 2021 Flagship Training Programme. The debate was moderated by Dr. Emilia Onyema, Professor of International Commercial Law, SOAS University of London and featured two pre-eminent arbitration practitioners – Prof. Gary Born and Prof. Jan…
Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. announced enhancements to Arbitrator Tool and a new Relationship Assessment Tool within Kluwer Arbitration Practice Plus (KAPP). Integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning with Wolters Kluwer’s arbitration expertise, the new features will provide arbitration professionals with valuable insights to assess arbitrators, properly advise their clients, and increase their rate…
For years, Australia and the U.K. have been the pioneering jurisdictions regarding ownership of law firms. Now, there’s a new kid on the block. Recent developments in a few U.S. states, predominantly Arizona, and a new approach by the American Bar Association (ABA) signal a broad reexamination of the long-entrenched prohibition on non-lawyer participation (ownership…
