High Increase in Arbitration Cases for Swiss Arbitration in 2009
In its first newsletter of the year 2010, the Swiss Chambers’ Court of Arbitration and Mediation was able to announce a high increase in arbitration cases submitted to the Court under the Swiss Rules of International Arbitration. A total of 104 new arbitration cases was submitted in 2009, an increase of more than fifty percent compared to 2008. According to the Court’s statistics, 48% of the parties were from Western Europe, 24% from Switzerland, 6% from Eastern Europe and Russia, 12% from Asia/Middle East and 5% from Northern America. 43% of the new arbitrations were heard by a panel of three arbitrators, 53% by a sole arbitrator.
Apparently, the expedited procedures available under the Sw [...]
Some Findings of the Russian Constitutional Court on International Arbitration
Under the Russian legal system, the last resort a party has with respect to challanging a court decision is to apply to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation with a claim to review the decision’s compliance with the Russian Constitution in terms of the provisions of laws and/or regulations applied by lower courts. There are very few cases in which the Constitutional Court opined on matters related to international arbitration.
Since the adoption of the Law “On International Commercial Arbitration” founded on the UNCITRAL Model Law, the compliance of its provisions with the Russian Constitution has been challenged four times. Three times the subject of the challenge was Ar [...]
Guy walks into a court-house. Sky does not fall.
I spent some time earlier this month covering the Chevron-Ecuador hearings that took place in the Federal District Court in New York City.
Much has been written about the outcome of those proceedings – and the denial of a request by Ecuador for an injunction against a bilateral investment treaty arbitration started some months ago by Chevron.
As a reporter covering international arbitration, I don’t get to attend many hearings.
But, over the course of two days, I settled into the peanut gallery along with a handful of journalists, a lot of interested lawyers, and a few concerned citizens. There was even a press spokesperson for a group of Ecuadorian plaintiffs working the room – and di [...]
Drafting International Arbitration Clauses – IBA Draft Guidelines Published
- By Phillip Capper, White & Case LLP,
for White & Case
Given that the arbitration clause is often relegated to the status of boiler-plate during contractual negotiations, it will come as no surprise that arbitration clauses may be inadequately drafted. While not every clause will be so deficient as to be ‘pathological’, many readers of this blog will have first-hand experience of dealing with the fall-out from an arbitration clause which has suffered from ambiguities in drafting or a lack of comprehensiveness of thought.
The ‘IBA Guidelines for Drafting International Arbitration Clauses’, recently published in draft form (at http://www.ibanet.org/LPD/Dispute_Resolution_Section/Arbitration/Default.aspx) will surely improve appreciation [...]
Some additional comments on the (now amended) Heidelberg Report: A reply to Professor Hess
I am grateful to Professor Hess for his comments on my 3 March 2010 blog. It greatly contributes to advancing the debate. However, it also perfectly illustrates the difficulties of a proposition – the total or partial deletion of the arbitration exception in Regulation 44/2001 – that has not been sufficiently thought through.
1. Professor Hess now introduces a very significant change in the Heidelberg proposal.
In his 14 February post on ConflictsofLaw.net, he had acknowledged that “the proposal of the Heidelberg Report to delete the arbitration exception entirely maybe goes too far”.
Professor Hess now proposes for the first time an alternative to the Heidelberg proposal by drafting [...]
La Incorporación de Cláusas de Arbitraje por Referencia
En arbitraje, a pesar de la cada vez mayor armonización a nivel internacional, siguen existiendo muchos temas en los que cada jurisdicción aporta un enfoque distinto, normalmente sobre cuestiones que van más allá del mero ámbito del arbitraje y entran de lleno en el ámbito contractual. Es lo que sucede con los acuerdos de sometimiento a arbitraje incorporados en contratos mediante referencia a documentos desconocidos para una de las partes. Un ejemplo sencillo sería un conocimiento de embarque entre A y B que incorpora una cláusula de arbitraje por referencia a un contrato de fletamento en el que sólo A o B son parte junto con un tercero. La diferencia existente entre el Derecho ing [...]
