Arbitration Awards

‘Drawing on his long and practical experience [the author gives] guidance which only the foolhardy would reject without good reason for doing so. With this manual beside him, many an arbitrator will, I feel sure, sleep the sounder.’ - The Rt Hon The Lord Bingham of Cornhill. The preparation of an arbitrator's award requires a rigorous approach to the consideration of submissions and evidence, and to the decisions stemming from that consideration, and the arbitrator must be competent to draft a valid and enforceable award. These tasks can be complex for any arbitrator, particularly so for the less experienced. This book has been written to provide clear and practical guidance, whilst emphasising that there is no standard method of preparing or writing an award. It includes illustrations relating to a wide range of types of award. It will be of interest to all arbitrators and those involved in the process, whether they are concerned with commodities, insurance, maritime matters, rent disputes, construction or commerce.

The specialization and financial demand of global business render international transactions inherently multilateral and thus best effected through arbitration agreements. However, it often happens that – for various reasons, such as a debtor’s failure to pay damages ordered by an arbitral tribunal – third parties who did not consent to the original arbitration enter the scene. This is the first book to examine the binding effects of international commercial arbitral awards in follow-up disputes against third parties. It comprehensively analyses arbitral awards’ third-party effects under national arbitration laws, the New York Convention and private international law. Moreover, it proposes solutions under transnational law before both courts and arbitral tribunals. Applying a continuously comparative methodology that refers to specific statutory, jurisprudential and scholarly sources, this book explores the nature and implications of such aspects of third-party involvement as the following: the foundations of the doctrine of res judicata and its intrinsic connection to other tools of forum coordination; the distinction between res judicata before courts on the one hand and arbitral tribunals on the other; the application of non-mutual preclusion in favour of third parties; the potential for arbitral awards to constitute a fact in follow-up disputes; a comparison of rules and uncertainties on awards’ third-party effects under various national arbitration acts; preclusion agreements; the arbitration agreement’s scope; and judgments’ third-party effects as a shift of the participatory burden. For civil law, the author focuses on France and Switzerland (as predominant arbitral seats) and on Germany (as a Model Law example). Among common-law countries, he concentrates on England and Wales and on the United States. Statutory sources (with specific wording), leading cases and summaries of the most important scholarly discussions are all invoked. With its clear guidelines for matters currently not addressed in previous publications and likely to be raised in specific cases, this book will prove to be of immeasurable value for arbitration practitioners and academics in any jurisdiction. Business parties that seek to prevent contradicting decisions in multilateral transactions will appreciate the practically feasible alternatives it presents in the event of follow-up disputes involving third parties.

The rise of international investment arbitration has resulted in the emergence of a number of intriguing legal and political challenges. One of those is the question of whether or not arbitral awards may constitute investments pursuant to existing investment treaties. In approaching the problem, it is the interconnection between theory and practice that delivers solutions. This book presents the first detailed analysis of the existing tribunals’ approaches to date. In examining the principles of treaty interpretation, their application in arbitral practice, shortcomings and their ramifications and possible routes to improvement, the book addresses the following questions: - What is the foundation of interpretation in public international law and when is it adequately carried out? - Can arbitral awards constitute investments, offering relief from frustrated enforcement attempts? - Is there a trend of convergence of commercial and investment arbitration? - Do respective interpretative outcomes stem from adequate interpretation? - What are the ramifications, if interpretation is not fully adequate? - What are the feasible routes to greater interpretive discipline? The book is mindful of the underlying public international law principles, such as state sovereignty and the increasing legal and political dynamics of international investment law. This is the first in-depth treatise on arbitral awards’ qualification as investments within international investment law. Its detailed analysis of the interpretive approaches, their foundation and consequences will, from a theoretical and practical point of view, prove of great value to international tribunals, counsel and sovereign entities. Maximilian Clasmeier has gained international arbitration experience in the dispute resolution practices of international law firms in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Singapore and worked for the World Bank Group in Washington, D.C.

This book examines how the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, commonly known as The New York Convention, has been understood and applied in [insert number] jurisdictions, including virtually all that are leading international arbitration centers. It begins with a general report surveying and synthesizing national responses to a large number of critical issues in the Convention’s interpretation and application. It is followed by national reports, all of which are organized in accordance with a common questionnaire raising these critical issues. Following introductory remarks, each report addresses the following aspects of the Convention which include its basic implementation within the national legal system; enforcement by local courts of agreements to arbitrate (including grounds for withholding enforcement), recognition and enforcement of foreign awards by local courts under the Convention (including grounds for denying recognition and enforcement), and essential procedural issues in the courts’ conduct of recognition and enforcement. Each report concludes with an overall assessment of the Convention’s interpretation and application on national territory and recommendations, if any, for reform. The New York Convention was intended to enhance the workings of the international arbitral system, primarily by ensuring that arbitral awards are readily recognizable and enforceable in States other than the State in which they are rendered, subject of course to certain safeguards reflected by the Convention’s limited grounds for denying recognition or enforcement. It secondarily binds signatory states to enforce the arbitration agreements on the basis of which awards under the Convention will be rendered. Despite its exceptionally wide adoption and its broad coverage, the New York Convention depends for its efficacy on the conduct of national actors, and national courts in particular. Depending on the view of international law prevailing in a given State, the Convention may require statutory implementation at the national level. Beyond that, the Convention requires of national courts an apt understanding of the principles and policies that underlie the Convention’s various provisions. Through its in-depth coverage of the understandings of the Convention that prevail across national legal systems, the book gives practitioners and scholars a much-improved appreciation of the New York Convention “on the ground.”

This volume focuses on arbitration awards as a discursive genre and draws on the results of research on the discourses of international commercial arbitration conducted within the framework of an international project (“International Commercial Arbitration Practices: A Discourse Analytical Study”) setting out to explore the hypothesis that, as suggested in recent times by various scholars, arbitration practice, procedures and discourses are being increasingly contaminated by litigation, thus compromising the integrity of arbitration principles. The genre investigated is especially interesting in this respect, as arbitration awards represent the final textual outcome of arbitration proceedings. The various chapters of the book, based on the analysis of different international corpora of arbitration awards in various languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish and Chinese), attack the same theme, investigating different aspects of the discursive construction of awards, with a view to identifying any elements of interdiscursivity that may provide evidence for or against the main hypothesis. The discussion of these issues also has theoretical relevance, as it provides interesting insights into the mechanisms that preside over the contamination and hybridization among genres in professional practice.

The past decade has seen a veritable explosion of investment treaty and other arbitration claims brought against sovereigns. Many of those cases have been filed before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Claims (ICSID), which has its own self-contained rules for enforcement. Given this significant increase in sovereign cases and the issues attendant to sovereign immunity, this treatise is timely in addressing the various issues that arise in enforcing arbitral awards against sovereigns. One of the first questions posed to their counsel by clients considering the initiation of an arbitration proceeding against a sovereign state is whether and how the resulting award can be enforced. The origin of the client’s question is usually based in some knowledge that a state possesses sovereign immunity, along with an uncertain concern about the exceptions to such immunity and the difficulties of enforcement against a sovereign’s assets. This uncertainty is understandable, especially in light of the sometimes confusing and even contradictory court decisions in certain jurisdictions. It is these inquiries in their broadest application that form the subject of this treatise. With contributions by eminent and experienced practitioners of the multiple issues that have arisen in various jurisdictions and the key cases that have created the law of enforcement of obligations against sovereigns, this book will provide access to valuable information, add to the transparency of this subject and further spur the consistent development of this area of law. This book is divided into three parts. The first part is general in nature and includes chapters encompassing the subjects of sovereign immunity in general (including both immunity from jurisdiction and immunity from enforcement), treaty obligations to honor awards, diplomatic protection by a claimant’s government to obtain payment of awards, and conciliation and settlement. The second part of the book deals with the means of enforcing awards. Part three of this treatise addresses the enforcement issues that arise in specific jurisdictions in which enforcement against sovereign assets is often sought - in particular, the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, The Netherlands, and South America.

In intemational arbitration, as in any other system of adjudication, finality of the decision must be balanced against the need to ensure that justice has been administered fairly. Because finality is one of its essential features, international arbitration has reached an equilibrium which guarantees to the parties a decision that cannot be appealed, while allowing a review of arbitral awards on limited grounds. The review of international arbitral awards was the topic of the inaugural IAI forum, on the occasion of which 50 prominent academics, judges, arbitrators and practitioners active in the field of international arbitration convened in the legendary Clos de Vougeot, in the heart of Burgundy for a two-day retreat. The presentations were followed by extensive discussion, the transcript of which is included in the present volume. The International Arbitration Institute (IAI) was established in Paris with the purpose of promoting communication and exchanges on current international arbitration issues. It now includes over 600 members residing in 44 countries. For further detail, see www.iaiparis.com.

The Public Policy Exception under the New York Convention: History, Interpretation, and Application describes in detail the drafting history of the public policy exception of Art. V (2) (b) of the New York Convention in order to determine the purpose the signatory states wanted to achieve with this clause. The book also explains how this clause is applied by the courts in many economically relevant states, and especially in Brazil, Russia, India, and China. In September 2012, the Indian Supreme Court, in a case entitled Bharat Aluminium Co. v. Kaiser Aluminium Technical Service, Inc., announced a long expected decision practically reversing the judgments of Bhatia International and Venture Global and holding that Indian Courts are not permitted to set aside foreign arbitral awards. In this Revised Edition, the author explains and explores the reasoning of the Indian Supreme Court in this landmark decision and discusses the practical implications and consequences. Public Policy Exception under the New York Convention: History, Interpretation, and Application is of importance for all internationally active companies as well as for lawyers and courts. The book aids lawyers and companies in drafting arbitration clauses and in enforcing foreign arbitral awards. Often, judgments will not be enforced abroad; this is especially true with respect to an enforcement of foreign judgments in the BRIC countries. Therefore, internationally active companies and their advisors need guidance if and where foreign arbitral awards in their favor will be enforced abroad.