Conflict Of Laws And Arbitral Discretion

Arbitration is the dispute resolution method of choice in international commerce, but it rests on a complex legal foundation. In many international commercial contracts, the parties will choose the law governing any future disputes. However, where the parties do not choose a governing law, theprevailing approach in arbitration is to afford arbitrators broad and largely unfettered discretion to choose the law considered most appropriate or most applicable. The uncertainty resulting from this discretion potentially affects the parties' rights and obligations, the performance of theircontract, the presentation of their cases, and negotiations undertaken to settle their disputes.In this text, Dr Benjamin Hayward critically reviews the prevailing approach to the conflict of laws in international commercial arbitration. The text adopts a focused and detail-oriented analysis - being based on a study of more than 130 sets of arbitral laws and rules from around the world, anddrawing heavily on arbitral case law. Nevertheless, it remains both practical and accessible, taking as its focus the needs and expectations of commercial parties, who are the ultimate users of international commercial arbitration.This text identifies the difficulties that result from resolving conflicts of laws through broad and unconstrained arbitral discretions. It establishes that a bright-line test would be a preferable way to resolve arbitral conflicts of laws. Specifically, it recommends a modified Art. 4 RomeConvention rule as the ideal basis for law reform in this area of arbitral procedure.

Internationale Schiedsverfahren und CISG bilden eine neutrale Plattform für internationale Handelsstreitigkeiten. Allerdings ist unklar, ob Schiedsrichter das CISG überhaupt anwenden müssen. Diese Arbeit untersucht zunächst die Rechtsnatur der Anwendungsnormen des CISG, mit dem Ergebnis, dass es sich um Internationales Privatrecht handelt. Dies führt zu der grundsätzlichen Frage nach der Bindung von Schiedsrichtern an IPR, in deren Prüfung völker- und europarechtliche sowie rechtspraktische Aspekte einbezogen werden. Eine Bindung wird abgelehnt. Schließlich wird ergänzend ein Blick auf die Bindungswirkung von materiellem Recht in Schiedsverfahren geworfen.

This volume contains the papers and proceedings of the eighth annual Juris Conference addressing new developments in investment treaty arbitration with a focus on the fundamental issues that have drawn some of the greatest controversies in the jurisprudence over the past few years. The four topics addressed in this book include: Challenges to Arbitrators: Should the Challenge Process Be Overhauled?New Developments in Definition of "Investment": What Is the Role of the Concept of "Property" in Investment Arbitration?Is Investment Treaty Arbitration a Mechanism to Second-guess Governments' Exercise of Administrative Discretion: Public Law or Lex Investoria?Awarding Damages: Proportionality, Contributory Fault, and Arbitral Tribunals' Discretion or Toss of a Coin? Contributors: Meriam N. Alrashid Paul Barker Julie Bédard Alexander Bĕlohlávek Amal Bouchenaki Mark N. Bravin Kate Brown de Vejar Julián Cárdenas Garcia Tina Cicchetti Robert A. DeRise Paolo Di Rosa James Egerton-Vernon Timothy L. Foden George K. Foster John Y. Gotanda George Kahale III Jonathan S. Kallmer Joshua Karton Matthew S. Kronby Pablo D. López Zadicoff Juan Felipe Merizalde Urdaneta Craig Miles Caline Mouawad Timothy G. Nelson Michael Nolan Eloïse Obadia Sirshar Qureshi Charles E. Roh Charles B. Rosenberg Margarita R. Sánchez Matthew D. Slater Fernando A. Tupa Janet M. Whittaker

Arbitration of International Business Disputes 2nd edition is a fully revised and updated anthology of essays by Rusty Park, a leading scholar in international arbitration and a sought-after arbitrator for both commercial and investment treaty cases. This collection focuses on controversial questions in arbitration of trade, financial, and investment disputes. The essays address some of the most interesting topics in cross-border business dispute resolution, many of which have endured over several decades and remain subject to radically different views. Examples include the proper role of judicial review, the allocation of jurisdictional tasks, evolution of arbitration's statutory and treaty framework, free trade and bilateral investment agreements, and the balance between fixed rules and arbitral discretion. The book is structured around three themes: arbitration's legal framework; the conduct of arbitral proceedings; and a comparison of arbitration in specific fields such as finance, intellectual property, and taxation. In each of these areas, analysis includes the tensions between fairness and efficiency, and the accurate application of substantive law as well as the implications of mandatory procedural norms. Augmented by more than a dozen new contributions and a revised introduction, this 2nd edition retains all of its earlier practical and scholarly relevance, and includes a Foreword by V. V. (Johnny) Veeder QC.

The rules by which a venue is selected and settled upon for the resolution of any given transnational dispute have fostered a complex, fascinating and burgeoning body of law of great commercial significance. As courts and legislatures seek to fashion sophisticated yet practicaljurisdictional responses to this issue, practitioners strive to maximize their clients' prospects of success by securing their own preferred venue. For so long as different forums yield the prospect of different outcomes in the resolution of any given dispute, litigation about where to litigate isinevitable.Forum shopping is the province of plaintiffs and defendants alike. This book examines the fascinating competition to win the battle for venue in transnational litigation.It first identifies and analyses the pre-conditions and incentives for forum shopping. These serve to explain not only the frequent intensity of interlocutory litigation relating to questions of venue but also the reason why much transnational litigation settles once the issue of venue is resolved,in turn underlining the practical significance of the subject. The guiding principle of the 'natural forum' - the common law's conceptual response to disputed questions of venue - is subjected to detailed analysis and compared with the more orderly response of jurisdiction-regulating conventions,most successfully effected in EU Regulation 44/2001 and its progenitor, the Brussels Convention. Then the various techniques of what can be called 'reverse forum shopping' including the evolving law relating to anti-suit injunctions and its interplay with the concept of international judicialcomity are considered in detail. Finally, the book examines the role of, and the law relating to, jurisdiction and arbitration agreements in transnational litigation, including the manifold techniques by which parties seek to (and frequently do) extricate themselves from these forum-selectionarrangements.

"This book is based on a dissertation that was generously supported by the International Max Planck Research School on successful dispute resolution in International law, a research school organized by Heidelberg University and the Max Planck Institute for comparative public law and International law in Heidelberg."

Contracts are relevant, frequently central, for a significant number of investment disputes. Yet, the way tribunals ascertain their content remains largely underexplored. How do tribunals interpret contracts in investment treaty arbitration? How should they interpret contracts? Does national law have any role to play? Contract Interpretation in Investment Treaty Arbitration: A Theory of the Incidental Issue addresses these questions. The monograph offers a valuable insight into the practice and theory of contract interpretation in investment treaty arbitration. By proposing a theoretical frame for seamless integration of contract interpretation into the overall structure of decision-making, the book contributes to predictability, coherence, sufficiency and correctness of the tribunals’ interpretative practices in investment treaty arbitration.