New York Convention

Worldwide interest in the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards has never been higher, and the New York Convention of 1958, currently adhered to by 159 States including the major trading nations, remains the most successful treaty in this area of commercial law. This incomparable book, marking the Convention’s 60th anniversary, provides a fully updated analysis of the Convention’s application from international, comparative, and national perspectives. Drawing on a global conference held in Seville in April 2018 that was actively supported by UNCITRAL, the book’s 27 chapters, by highly qualified international practitioners and academics from different jurisdictions, address the subject with critical eyes, well aware of current developments and future challenges in the field of arbitration. Among the issues and topics covered are the following: Multi-tiered dispute resolution clauses. Applicability of the UN Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts. Complexities of enforcing orders determined by software. Enforcement of annulled awards. European Union law and the New York Convention. Enforcing awards against States and State entities. Sovereign immunity as a ground to refuse compliance with investor-State awards; Enforcement against non-signatories. Public policy exception. Arbitrating and enforcing foreign awards in specific countries and regions, including China, sub-Saharan Africa, and the ASEAN countries. Ample reference is made throughout to leading cases and practice. Familiarity with the intricacies of the New York Convention, as the most universally acknowledged framework in which cross-border economic exchanges can flourish, is essential for judges, practitioners, legal staff, business people, and scholars working with or applying international commercial arbitration anywhere in the world. This book’s combination of highly thought-provoking topics and the depth with which they are addressed will prove invaluable to all interested parties

The New York Convention has served as the cornerstone of the international arbitration system since its signature in 1958 until the present day. The Guide on the New York Convention provides an insight on the application of the Convention by State courts. It was initiated in 2010 when UNCITRAL commissioned the assistance of Professors Gaillard and Bermann as part of its efforts to promote wider adherence to the text of the New York Convention as well as its uniform interpretation and effective implementation. The interpretation that derives from court decisions of diverse jurisdictions makes the Guide a unique tool to understand the New York Convention, an almost universally adopted text, and to monitor its application. This guide is mainly designed for legal practitioners.

The analysis thoroughly covers the major issues that have arisen in the application of the Convention, including the following: - the use of reservations made by Contracting States; - the distinctions between recognition and enforcement and between recognition sought at the seat of the arbitration and outside the seat; - the role of the courts in reviewing arbitral awards and, in particular, the Convention's focus on safeguarding due process standards; - the more favourable rightsA" principle embodied in Article VII(1); - the relevance of forum shopping and asset spotting to the application of the Convention; and - the role of formalities and formalism. The end result is an invaluable work that will prove enormously useful to all international commercial arbitration practitioners and scholars, regardless of location.

The 1958 New York Convention has been called the most effective instance of international legislation in the entire history of commercial law. However, the succinct text of the Convention leaves open a host of significant and complex questions, which may be, and have been, answered in a variety of ways; as difficult cases arise and demand solutions, they generate inconsistent outcomes. For all its remarkable success, the Convention has on occasion proved itself to be unreliable and unpredictable. This book simultaneously exposes the difficulties of the Convention and explores potential solutions. It examines each substantive article of the New York Convention in accordance with the following outline: • the text and its issues; • original intent; • the prism of the rules of interpretation of the Vienna Convention; • judicial outcomes; and • appraisal. By drawing on the Convention's drafting history in great detail, the book presents a coherent account of how the most frequently recurring interrogations about the text are reflected (or not) in judicial practice. The author studied more than 1,700 decisions rendered under the Convention since its inception in 1958 in order to provide a succinct selection of landmark cases per article. With its intense investigation of the complex reality underlying contracting States' commitment in principle and judicial application in fact, the author's judicial understanding of the Convention provides a clear conceptual framework that will help avoid outcomes at odds with the purposes of this important instrument. Lawyers and judges will rely on this book not only to situate the Convention in the national legal orders where it is intended to produce its effects, but also discover practical ways to respond to distinct questions of application.

Autonomous Versus Domestic Concepts under the New York Convention is a unique book that examines the New York Convention intending to identify the boundaries between autonomous and domestic concepts. The 1958 New York Convention is universally acclaimed as one of the essential instruments of international commercial arbitration. Although the Convention ensures that contracting States cannot justify failure to comply with their treaty obligations by reference to domestic law, the courts of different contracting States apply the Convention differently. This diverging case law arises from uncertainty as to whether certain concepts employed in the Convention must be construed autonomously or in light of domestic law. A diverse group of distinguished scholars, including some of the world’s leading voices on arbitration, have provided insightful contributions for this book which are sure to significantly add to arbitral practice and jurisprudence in the Convention’s more than 160 contracting States.

The New York Arbitration Convention of 1958 is the cornerstone of international commercial arbitration. Although judicial interpretation of the Convention has proceeded since the publication of Albert Jan van den Berg's classic commentary, his extraordinarily thorough analysis remains the preeminent work on the application and enforcement aspects of the Convention. Setting out to repair what van den Berg calls "an undesirable degree of uncertainty" in judicial interpretation of the Convention, his analysis takes a comparative approach to relevant court decisions in the contracting states. For each of three main subject areas - the field of application, enforcement of the agreement, and enforcement of the award - he examines the various issues, explaining the relevant Convention provisions and analyzing and comparing the relevant court decisions. For issues on which a consensus is lacking, he offers an analysis leading to a single valid interpretation. Many of these interpretations have become virtually settled in current practice. In addition to case law, the author takes into account the legislative history of the 1958 Conference and the provisions of earlier arbitration conventions. This is a true classic in the sense that its immediate usefulness has never flagged over the nearly three decades of its availability. Arbitrators and judges everywhere have leaned on it, and continue to lean on it, for the depth and clarity of its understanding of the law of international commercial arbitration. While it is a standard academic work in the field, its proven great practical value to jurists and practitioners persists.

In a world characterized, on the one hand, by globalized trade and commerce, and, on the other, by deteriorating judicial services, arbitration has become the dispute resolution mechanism of choice in cross-border commercial transactions. International arbitration not only paves the way for parties to avoid State courts, it also facilitates the transnational enforceability of awards that are far more effective than the enforceability of State court judgments. The major instrument is the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Convention) of June 10, 1958, which entered into force one year after. Since then, the New York Convention has been ratified by 144 States, including all the important trading nations. For good reason, the New York Convention is labeled the Magna Carta of international arbitration. The courts of any contracting State are required "to give effect to an agreement to arbitrate when seized of an action in a matter covered by an arbitration agreement and also to recognize and enforce awards made in other States, subject to specific limited exceptions" (UNCITRAL). In this book, the 16 articles of the Convention are dealt with in an article-by-article analysis, following a clear structure which swiftly guides the reader to the issue that he or she is engaged with. Given the New York Convention's global relevance, it follows that potential users of the Convention are in need of guidance as to how to apply it. The primary readers of this book will be: lawyers seeking (or defending against) recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards worldwide, State court judges applying the Convention in recognition proceedings, and in-house lawyers in large and/or multinational enterprises dealing with transnational dispute resolution.

Volume 14 of ICCA Congress Series, The New York Convention at 50, comprises the proceedings of the ICCA Conference held in Dublin in 2008 on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards. One of the highlights of the Conference was a Plenary Session in which the world's leading arbitration experts debated the need to revise the New York Convention. This discussion, along with the text of a preliminary draft of the revised Convention presented during the Conference, is reported in this volume. Further Reports and Commentary explore the two main themes of the Conference: Investment Treaty Arbitration/Treaty Arbitration, with contributions on: The Impact of Investment Treaty Arbitration: Identifying the Expectations, Testing the Assumptions; Investment Treaty Arbitration and Commercial Arbitration: Are They Different Ball Games? Remedies in Investment Treaty Arbitration: The Bottom Line; and The Enforcement of Investment Treaty Awards, and Rules-Based Solutions to Procedural Issues, with contributions on: Multi-party Disputes; Consolidation of Claims; Summary Disposition; and Provisional Measures. The volume also includes transcripts of the Round Table Session assessing the revisions to the UNCITRAL Rules on International Commercial Arbitration and of an Open Discussion on Recent Developments in International Arbitration.