It has now become a tradition that in December of each year, Kluwer Arbitration Blog offers you several posts with a retrospective of the year in specific regions and fields. We also take this opportunity to present ourselves and thank you for your immense support, as readers and contributors. Entering a New Year has also…
It is well known that disputes arising from the realisation of major energy and infrastructure projects are often exceptionally complex, long, and expensive. They are of high factual and technical complexity with a great volume of evidence, witnesses and experts and involve multiple parties with the fragmentation of responsibilities. As such, one of the main…
On 12 November 2019, the Mauritius International Arbitration Centre (“MIAC”) hosted an event to celebrate its relaunch following the termination of the institution’s joint venture with the London Court of International Arbitration (“LCIA”) in July 2018. Like many other arbitral centres that have emerged across Africa,1)G. Travaini, ‘Arbitration Centres in Africa: Too Many Cooks?’, Kluwer…
Amidst the typical hustle and bustle of year-end festivities, our Southeast Asia editorial team takes a moment to look back on the arbitration developments in Southeast Asia in 2019. New Free Trade Agreements and Developments in National Laws In 2019, states comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (“ASEAN”) continued to demonstrate their commitment…
As discussed in our previous post (available here), Polish civil procedure, including arbitration law (contained in Part V of the Polish Code of Civil Procedure or ‘CCP’) has undergoing significant changes. This post focuses on those amendments that substantially modify the legal framework for arbitration of corporate disputes. Problems with the Arbitrability of Shareholder…
Introduction There have been three main long-standing controversies concerning arbitration in Egypt. First, interest rates and whether they are truly part of Egyptian substantive public policy.1)Ismail Selim, ‘Egyptian Public Policy as a Ground for Annulment and Refusal of Enforcement of Arbitral Awards’ (2016) 3 BCDR International Arbitration Review, Issue 1, pp. 65–79. Second, whether the…
In this post we consider the soundness of the legal conclusion of the Johannesburg High Court in the recent matter of Government of the United Republic of Tanzania v Hermanus Philippus Steyn (28994/2019) [2019] ZAGPJHC 312 (4 September 2019); 2019 JDR 1690 (GJ) (“Reconsideration Judgment“) to confirm jurisdiction over foreigners in South Africa in order…
Polish civil procedure is in the midst of a very significant makeover. The bulk of amendments came into effect on 7 November 2019 (the Polish version of the amending act to the Polish Code of Civil Procedure (CCP) is available here). This blog post discusses the nature of those amendments and their significance for arbitration….
2019 was a lively year for international arbitration in Latin America – especially in the international commercial arbitration arena, which is the focus of this post. Contributors to Kluwer Arbitration Blog reported mostly on favorable developments on arbitration-related legislation, case law and other initiatives. The year, however, ended with a regrettable situation in Peru, where…
There have been some false dawns but Thailand has become significantly more arbitration-friendly in recent years. This post briefly canvasses the recent developments and identifies potential areas for further development. Amendments to the Thai Arbitration Act – Arbitrators and Representatives Allowed to Work in Thailand Previously, foreign arbitrators were required to undergo an onerous…
Introduction At the latest ODR Forum which was held on 29-31 October 2019 in Williamsburg, Virginia, Dr Anyu Lee presented on China’s vision of online dispute resolution (“ODR”). He discussed how far China has progressed in developing artificial intelligence (“AI”) tools for online courts, arbitration and mediation. He also described the potential of AI in…
2019 has been a busy year for international arbitration in Sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, the year has brought an interesting wave of precedents, new domestic statutes, modern international investment agreements, and arbitration events. This post highlights and summarises some of the African developments covered in the Blog in 2019, with many thanks to the authors who…
To mark the 50th anniversary of the CEPANI, we are pleased to present you with this special issue of b-Arbitra, devoted to Supreme Courts and Arbitration. We are grateful to the eminent specialists who have agreed to deliver, for their respective jurisdictions, comprehensive reports of the Supreme Courts’ rulings in arbitration matters. Their overviews cover…
The swift and far-reaching development experienced by arbitration in Spain over the past few decades is unprecedented in the context of other arbitration-friendly jurisdictions. In little more than 40 years, a fully-fledged arbitration system was set up virtually from scratch. In 1977 Spain ratified the New York Convention without reservation, thus entering the international arbitration…
This year, I had the extraordinary pleasure of speaking at the Emirate Maritime Arbitration Centre (the “EMAC”) inaugural event of Dubai Arbitration Week 2019 (for the full presentation, see here). The EMAC, as readers may know, is the only arbitration institution specialized in the administration of maritime disputes through arbitration in the UAE and the…
Counsel ethics has been a recurring talking point in arbitration circles. Most recently, the topic was raised at the 2018 SIAC Congress, then again by a panel at the 2019 Australian Bar Association Conference. The continued interest in this issue is unsurprising. As arbitration becomes more international, we must increasingly confront the difficulties that arise…
The 98th Annual Meeting of the American Branch of the International Law Association (“ABILA”), known as ABILA’s International Law Weekend (“ILW”), took place in New York City on 10 – 12 October 2019. ILW, ABILA’s premiere annual event, featured 35 panels covering a broad range of topics of international law.1)The summary of the views expressed…
A recent case has shocked the international arbitration community: pre-trial detention was issued against three renowned arbitrators. Their crime? Determining their fees based on the amount of the dispute and having meetings with both parties to discuss the applicable rules and who will act as the Chairperson. In other words, behave as any other arbitrator…
Last week QMUL, in partnership with the Corporate Counsel International Arbitration Group (“CCIAG”), launched its first ever survey focusing exclusively on international investment. This is the tenth major empirical International Arbitration survey conducted by the School of International Arbitration at Queen Mary University of London. A link to the survey can be found here. The…
As the number of investor-state disputes grows, so does the number of applications for provisional measures. The recent empirical study conducted by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and White&Case suggests that investors were more than twice as likely to obtain positive decisions on their requests than respondent states. The study also showed that…
Those applying treaties and interpreting them must remember two salient points: (1) as international adjudicators or as members of the judiciary they must apply a treaty not on the basis of discretionary powers and a judicial hunch but on the basis of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) and (2) lack of…
The Cold War era brought to life, in a strange way, a number of all-encompassing treaties dealing with major subjects such as international treaty-making, diplomatic relations, law of seas, etc. Even among the topics covered by these treaties were enforcement of foreign arbitral awards and investment disputes. However, it seems like the world has already…
The growing public interest in investment treaties and investor-State dispute settlement has prompted an increasing number of States to open to public view aspects of investment treaty negotiations. During the negotiation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (‘TTIP’), for example, both the European Union and the United States sought to ‘maximise’ transparency in the…
The Vienna Convention rules for treaty interpretation (VCLT) routinely referred to by all international courts and tribunals are known to be the result of a compromise between different schools of interpretation and therefore notoriously flexible, in my view too flexible for the purposes of modern-day international dispute resolution. Cases are therefore won and lost according…
