Law Commons^™

The Uncitral Model Law At The Us State Level, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

The arbitration law of the United States remains, regrettably, the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), enacted in 1925 and essentially unchanged. Despite its age, it has been significantly amended only once, in order to transpose into law the New York and Panama Conventions. Otherwise, it reads just as it did when enacted almost a century ago. Given its age and the remarkable developments in the law of arbitration over past decades, the FAA unsurprisingly fails to address a very large number of issues that have arisen in arbitral proceedings and judicial decisions on arbitration in the many intervening years. Even the …

Anticipatory Deference: What Will Courts Decide And Not Decide Before Enforcing An Agreement To Arbitrate?, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

The question of deference in international arbitration usually arises when the issue before a decision-maker, be it a tribunal or a court, is one that has already been addressed and ruled upon by another decision-maker over an arbitration’s life-cycle. The salience of this question stems from the fact that international arbitration is a highly iterative and staged process over the course of which different actors are successively confronted with the same issue. This is particularly the case in regard to jurisdictional issues because the authority of a tribunal to entertain a dispute is potentially an issue at all stages.

But …

Doctrinal Conflict In Foreign Investment Regulation In India: ​​Ntt Docomo Vs. Tata Sons And The Case For “Downside Protection”, M. P. Ram Mohan, Nobuhisa Ishizuka, Sidharth Sharma

Faculty Scholarship

The strategic importance of India as an investment destination for foreign investors is highlighted by ongoing tensions in the Indo-Pacific region and the recognition that a strong economic relationship with India is in the interests of countries seeking a more stable balance of power in the region. From a policy perspective, India has struggled to balance its own economic interests with the commercial requirements of investors. Rules attempting to strike this balance have created uncertainties that have resulted in investors seeking greater protections for their investments, which in turn have triggered additional regulatory responses that enforce India’s policy preferences. The …

The Future Of International Commercial Arbitration, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Although international commercial arbitration is not subject to as much criticism as investor-State arbitration, it is nonetheless facing challenges going forward. These challenges are several, and only some can be addressed in this chapter. Some relate to concerns that have been with international arbitration for a long time. These include costs, delay and excessive formality, as well as arbitrator neutrality. Others – arbitration ethics, diversity, and transparency – are not new, but are taking on greater urgency. Still others simply represent new developments more or less extrinsic to international arbitration but with which international arbitration must cope. Among these changes …

After First Options: Delegation Run Amok, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

The proper allocation of authority between courts and arbitral tribunals over the enforceability of agreements to arbitrate has long occupied a central place in U.S. arbitration law, domestic and international alike. From U.S. Supreme Court case law over the years, there has emerged a reasonably well-understood distinction between those issues of enforceability that a court will address if asked by a party to do so and those that it will not. Fundamental to the Court’s jurisprudence is a recognition that some enforceability issues – “gateway issues” – so seriously implicate the consent of parties to arbitrate their disputes that a …

Plurilateral Cooperation As An Alternative To Trade Agreements: Innovating One Domain At A Time, Bernard M. Hoekman, Charles F. Sabel

Faculty Scholarship

At the end of 2017 different groups of WTO members decided to launch talks on four subjects, setting aside the WTO consensus working practice. This paper argues that these ‘joint statement initiatives’ (JSIs) should seek to establish open plurilateral agreements (OPAs) even in instances where the outcome can be incorporated into existing schedules of commitments of participating WTO members. Designing agreements as OPAs provides an institutional framework for collaboration among the responsible national authorities, transparency, mutual review and learning, as well as alternatives to default WTO dispute settlement procedures which may not be appropriate for supporting cooperation on the matters …

Procedures For The Enforcement Of New York Convention Awards, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Article III of the New York Convention expresses the Contracting States’ core obligation under the Convention, namely the obligation to enforce Convention awards, absent a basis in the Convention for declining to do so. At the same time, the Convention drafters chose not to prescribe the manner in which such enforcement should take place. Article III expressly reserved the matter to the law of the place where enforcement under the Convention is sought.

Enforcement was to be achieved “in accordance with the rules of procedure of the territory where the award is relied upon.” The only limitations on the freedom …

Informing Wto Reform: Dispute Settlement Performance, 1995-2020, Bernard M. Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis, Maarja Saluste

Faculty Scholarship

This article presents salient facts on the performance of WTO dispute settlement, using an updated dataset on cases adjudicated between 1992 and mid 2020. The dataset provides a comprehensive compilation of information on WTO disputes, including complainants, respondents and third parties; the substantive matters tabled; the WTO provisions invoked; the claims that are accepted or rejected by adjudicating bodies; the time involved to complete the consultation, panel and appeal (Appellate Body) stages; and the identity of panelists and how they were appointed. We highlight elements of the operation of the system that are salient to WTO reform discussions, while drawing …

Automating Fairness? Artificial Intelligence In The Chinese Court, Rachel E. Stern, Benjamin L. Liebman, Margaret Roberts, Alice Z. Wang

Faculty Scholarship

How will surging global interest in data analytics and artificial intelligence transform the day-to-day operations of courts, and what are the implications for judicial power? In the last five years, Chinese courts have come to lead the world in their efforts to deploy automated pattern analysis to monitor judges, standardize decision-making, and observe trends in society. This Article chronicles how and why Chinese courts came to embrace artificial intelligence, making public tens of millions of court judgments in the process. Although technology is certainly being used to strengthen social control and boost the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, examining …

Wto Dispute Settlement And The Appellate Body Crisis: Insider Perceptions And Members’ Revealed Preferences, Matteo Fiorini, Bernard M. Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis, Maarja Saluste, Robert Wolfe

Faculty Scholarship

The WTO dispute settlement system is in crisis, following the decision of the United States to block new appointments to the Appellate Body (AB). The AB went into hibernation in December 2019, not having enough sitting members to be able to operate. What do WTO members think of the performance of WTO dispute settlement? How much do WTO members care about the existence and operation of an appeals mechanism? In this article, we report on the results of a survey of WTO Members’ perceptions of the AB and the role it plays (should play). We complement this with data on …

Stakeholder Preferences And Priorities For The Next Wto Director General, Matteo Fiorini, Bernard Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis, Douglas Nelson, Robert Wolfe

Faculty Scholarship

The WTO is looking for a new Director-General (DG). What does the trade community think is needed? This paper reports on the results of an expert survey undertaken as part of a research project on global trade governance at the European University Institute to solicit views on what WTO members and the international trade community consider the most important attributes of candidates for the position, as well as views on the substantive policy and institutional reform priorities confronting the WTO – and thus the new DG. The results suggest strong support for someone with managerial and political experience, and a …

The Self-Styled 'Autonomy' Of International Arbitration, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Among international legal regimes, international arbitration has traditionally claimed for itself a remarkable degree of autonomy from other international regimes, an autonomy that enables it to enjoy a remarkable measure of self-determination. Its assertions of autonomy take a number of different forms and exhibit considerable resilience. Autonomy does allow international arbitration to develop in accordance with norms that are specific to it, but it also poses challenges that need, even for international arbitration’s own well-being, to be acknowledged and addressed.

Dispute Resolution In Pandemic Circumstances, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

The peaceful resolution of disputes is among the most important earmarks of a regime attached to the rule of law. Even in countries in which, for one reason or another, courts do not work especially well, civil peace is of paramount importance. The absence of effective institutions for the administration of justice between and among private parties would spell a high degree of social disorder.

Even in the absence of a crisis such as we are experiencing, justice systems face a number of challenges in this day and age. Does a jurisdiction have a sufficient number of persons qualified to …

Insulating A Wto Investment Facilitation Framework From Isds, George A. Bermann, N. Jansen Calamita, Manjiao Chi, Karl P. Sauvant

Faculty Scholarship

The authors identify several ways in which a WTO investment facilitation framework for development can be insulated from investor-state dispute settlement provisions in international investment agreements, and suggest specific formulations in this respect.

To Ab Or Not To Ab?: Dispute Settlement In Wto Reform, Bernard M. Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

Recent debates on the operation of the WTO’s dispute resolution mechanism have focused primarily on the Appellate Body (AB). We argue that this neglects the first-order issue confronting the rules-based trading system: sustaining the principle of de-politicized conflict resolution that is reflected in the negative consensus rule for adoption of dispute settlement findings. Improving the quality of the work of panels by appointing a roster of full-time professional adjudicators, complemented by reforms to WTO working practices that reduce incentives to resort to formal dispute settlement, can resolve the main issues that led to the AB crisis. Effective, coherent, and consistent …

Making Sense Of The Arbitrator’S Ruling In Ds 316 Ec And Certain Member States – Measures Affecting Trade In Large Civil Aircraft (Article 22.6-Ec): A Jigsaw Puzzle With (At Least) A Couple Missing Pieces, Petros C. Mavroidis, Kamal Saggi

Faculty Scholarship

“The U.S. won a $7.5 Billion award from the World Trade Organization against the European Union, who has for many years treated the USA very badly on Trade due to Tariffs, Trade Barriers, and more. This case going on for years, a nice victory”, tweeted President Trump’s on October 3, 2019. The United States (US) won not only the highest amount of retaliation ever adjudicated in the history of the WTO but also an ongoing right to retaliate on an annual basis until such time as the EU had complied by either removing the subsidies it granted Airbus or somehow …

Preventing The Bad From Getting Worse: The End Of The World (Trade Organization) As We Know It?, Bernard Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

Recent survey evidence and proposals made in long-running negotiations to improve WTO dispute settlement procedures illustrate that many stakeholders believe the system needs improvement. The Appellate Body crisis could have been avoided but for the use of consensus as WTO working practice. Resolving the crisis should prove possible because the matter mostly concerns a small number of more powerful WTO members. We make several proposals to revitalize the WTO appellate function but argue that unless the WTO becomes a locus for new rulemaking, re-establishing the appellate function will not prevent a steady decline in the salience of the organization. A …

Costs Allocation In International Arbitration: What Normative Source, If Any?, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Costs in arbitration is one of those many issues that arises constantly (at least in any arbitration that gets underway), but as to which there is by no means any universally accepted standard of judgment. It is also not particularly usual for parties to address the issue of costs directly in their arbitration agreement, or for the matter to be addressed in the law of arbitration of the seat. If the rules of arbitral procedure that the parties may have incorporated into their arbitration agreement address the matter, they may not do so in highly informative terms. The Rules of …

International Arbitration: Out Of The Shadows, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses a diverse number of issues that have affected the strength and popularity of international arbitration among its users. It emphasises the importance of the arbitration community recognising the force and validity of a number of critiques of the process and developing strategies for dealing with them. It is an edited version of a Keynote Address delivered at the ADR in Asia Conference on 29 October 2018.

Twin Crises In The Wto, And No Obvious Way Out, Bernard M. Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

Pause for a moment. Assume that, by magic wand, the Trump Administration changes its attitude, and agrees to new appointments to the Appellate Body (AB). Have the WTO problems disappeared simply because a complete AB is now in place? Even if matters such as Rule 15 are addressed,1 the distinction between facts and law is clarified and a resolution is found to concerns regarding the AB overstepping of its mandate, we are left with the fact that new trade agreements are being routinely negotiated outside the confines of the WTO, leading enforcement to migrate elsewhere. Is the AB crisis simply …

European Union Law And International Arbitration At A Crossroads, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

It is no exaggeration to describe the relationship between the European Union and international arbitration as the most dramatic confrontation between two international legal regimes seen in a great many years. International law scholars commonly lament the "fragmentation" of international law, i.e., the co-existence of multiple international legal regimes whose competences overlap and whose policies may differ, resulting in a degree of regulatory disorder. However, seldom do these regimes actually "collide." By contrast, the two international regimes in which we are interested this evening international arbitration and the European Union may be described, without hyperbole, as on a collision course. …

Burning Down The House? The Appellate Body In The Centre Of The Wto Crisis, Bernard Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

In December 2019 the WTO Appellate Body (AB) will cease to operate unless the United States stops blocking new appointments. The US argues the AB has exceeded its mandate and has indicated it wants to ensure that the AB performs the role originally assigned to it in 1995. This paper discusses the Uruguay round negotiating history with the view to establish what “going back to 1995” entails. It concludes that this should not be difficult assuming a willingness of the WTO membership to seriously consider the US concerns and acceptance by the US of a commitment by the membership to …

Global Settlements: Promise And Peril, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

In 2010, Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd. destabilized the world of securities litigation by denying those who purchased their securities outside the U.S. the ability to sue in the U.S. (as they had previously often done). Nature, however abhors a vacuum, and practitioners and other jurisdictions began to seek ways to regain access to U.S. courts. Several techniques have emerged: (1) expanding settlement classes so that they are broader than litigation classes and treating the location of the transaction as strictly a merits issue that defendants could waive; (2) adopting U.S. law as applicable to securities issued abroad by …

What Does It Mean To Be ‘Pro-Arbitration’?, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

International arbitration commentators commonly ask of a proposed policy or practice whether it is ‘pro-’ or ‘anti-arbitration’. Framing the question that way presupposes a shared understanding of what does or does not make a policy or practice arbitration-friendly. In truth, the ways in which policies or practices may affect international arbitration’s well-being are manifold. They may even distinctly serve international arbitration’s well-being in some respects while equally distinctly disserving it in others. It behooves those who take international; arbitration’s well-being seriously to acknowledge the multiplicity of metrics for identifying what is ‘pro-’ and what is ‘anti-arbitration’ and to seek the …

Arbitration As Wealth Transfer, Deepak Gupta, Lina M. Khan

Faculty Scholarship

Over the last few decades, the Supreme Court has steadily expanded the reach of forced arbitration clauses – clauses that companies embed in the fine print of standard-form contracts to deny consumers and workers the right to band together to sue those corporations in court. While the Court’s decisions that set this trend in motion trace back to the 1980s, the real game changers have been more recent: 2010’s Rent-A-Center v. Jackson, holding that arbitration clauses must be enforced even when they are part of an illegal contract; 2011’s AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, granting companies the unfettered right …

The Role Of National Courts At The Threshold Of Arbitration, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

There is a broad consensus that national courts of the arbitral seat have some kind of role to play during the pendency of an arbitration, though the exact contours of that role may differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Similarly, it seems clear that national courts have a role to play on a post-award basis. While jurisdictions may vary as to the extent of control in annulment actions, the New York Convention brings a high degree of consensus over the role of courts in the recognition and enforcement of foreign awards, even though the Convention may receive different interpretations in different …

Amazon's Antitrust Paradox, Lina M. Khan

Faculty Scholarship

Amazon is the titan of twenty-first century commerce. In addition to being a retailer, it is now a marketing platform, a delivery and logistics network, a payment service, a credit lender, an auction house, a major book publisher, a producer of television and films, a fashion designer, a hardware manufacturer, and a leading host of cloud server space. Although Amazon has clocked staggering growth, it generates meager profits, choosing to price below-cost and expand widely instead. Through this strategy, the company has positioned itself at the center of e-commerce and now serves as essential infrastructure for a host of other …

The Yukos Annulment: Answered And Unanswered Questions, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

On April 20, 2016, a Dutch court issued a major judgment annulling awards rendered in a dispute between the Russian Federation and three majority shareholders of the former giant Russian oil producer, OAO Yukos Oil Company (“Yukos”). The annulment by a national court of any investor-State award is always of great moment, but it was particularly so in the case of an award in excess of $50 billion. Discussion of the judgment has understandably occupied much of the international arbitration blogosphere.

After setting out the basic facts of the case, this piece briefly describes the position that the Tribunal had …

Military Activities In The Unclos Compulsory Dispute Settlement System: Implications Of The South China Sea Arbitration For U.S. Ratification Of Unclos, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

The Award on the Merits in the South China Sea Arbitration between the Philippines and China (Award) is the first decision of any tribunal to interpret the provision of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Convention or UNCLOS) that allows states parties to exclude disputes concerning military activities from the Convention’s compulsory dispute settlement regime. That optional exclusion, embodied in Article 298(1)(b) of the Convention, was a central component of the strenuously-negotiated compromise between states that favored compulsory jurisdiction in principle and those that would have preferred a strictly optional system for third-party legal dispute …

The Role Of Language Interpretation In Providing A Quality Mediation Process, Alexandra Carter, Shawn Watts

Faculty Scholarship

This paper focuses on the role of language in mediation and the challenges multiple language fluencies bring to the practice. Beginning with a discussion of the process and ethics of mediation as a form of alternative dispute resolution, as distinct from other forms of dispute resolution including arbitration, the paper shifts to consider the importance of language. Language, and more specifically interpretation, plays a central role in the integrity of the mediation process and the quality of its outcomes. Each stage of mediation requires the participants and the mediator understand one another to ensure effective communication and a quality process. …