The Singapore International Arbitration Centre (“SIAC”) has issued new rules that came into force on April 1, 2013. The rules changes are accompanied by new Practice Notes for cases administered by SIAC under its rules and the UNCITRAL rules that also came into force on the same date. While the changes do not reflect a significant overhaul of the prior version of the institution’s rules, they do contain important changes of which practitioners should be aware.

The 2013 rules are the fifth set of rules issued by SIAC, which promulgated previous versions in 1991, 1997, 2007, and 2010. The SIAC rules are one of several sets of arbitral rules to be updated in the last few years; other [...]

This post is a little different… I am in the process of revising my treatise, International Commercial Arbitration (Kluwer 2009), and would like to solicit comments from readers of the Kluwer Arbitration Blog on various chapters of the book. I would be happy to send individual Chapters, in their revised form, to those interested in providing comments.

The treatise aspires to provide a comprehensive treatment of the law, practice, policies and theoretical foundations of international commercial arbitration. It focusses on international, rather than any particular national, authority and solutions, addressing in particular the New York Convention, UNCITRAL Model Law and national arbitrat [...]

The U.S. Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) provides that a federal district court may vacate an arbitration award, among other reasons, “where there was evident partiality or corruption in the arbitrators.” 9 U.S.C. §10(a). However, as illustrated by a recently decided case in the Southern District of New York, U.S. district courts apply different standards of “evident partiality,” depending on the circuit in which they are located.

In Ometto v. ASA Bioenergy Holding A.G., decided this past January, the petitioners (collectively “Ometto”) brought a motion to vacate two arbitration awards against them totaling almost $120 million. Ometto’s motion was based on the fact that after [...]

Winter holidays invite fun reading, including good professional reading, that most of the rest of the year forbids. Not exactly beach reads, but the same idea. And, this year, readers from the United States with interests in international arbitration, had their choice among a host of new offerings. Three warrant special mention.

First, Professor Bo Rutledge’s “Arbitration and the Constitution” offers a thoughtful and provocative study of what, in the United States, are surprising companions. As Rutledge comments at the outset of his work, “Arbitration and the Constitution? At first glance, these two bodies of law appear to be strange bedfellows.” On the one hand, arbitration is q [...]

In its important 2011 decision AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, the United States Supreme Court sharply limited the grounds on which a court may invalidate an arbitration agreement. A recent ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, In re Checking Account Overdraft Litigation MDL No. 2036, illustrates how lower courts are starting to find ways around the Supreme Court’s strict enforcement of arbitration agreements. This is the first published, post-Concepcion case where a federal court of appeals has rejected an element of an arbitration agreement as unconscionable under state law. The decision also suggests how the drafters of arbitration agreements might avoid [...]

In August 2011, the tribunal in Abaclat and others v Argentina decided (by a majority) that it had jurisdiction over claims brought by approximately 60,000 Italian investors, and that the claims were admissible.[1] The Italian investors claim that Argentina has breached its obligations under the Argentina-Italy bilateral investment treaty (BIT) when it defaulted on and subsequently restructured its sovereign debt. The decision on jurisdiction and admissibility will no doubt be much debated because of the tribunal’s discussion of the admissibility of mass claims under ICISD and its definition of “investment.” But the decision is also of interest because of the approach the tribunal adop [...]