This article examines international commercial arbitration, one of the most popular methods for the resolution of disputes that arise in the context of international commercial relations. The volume ...of trade between Russia and China has been gradually increasing in recent years, which testifies to the fact that the study of international commercial arbitration legal regulation in both nations is extremely relevant. The authors examine the concept of international commercial arbitration entities, as well as the sources of legal regulation that govern their establishment and operation in Russia and Mainland China. In addition, the procedures for case consideration, the elaboration of arbitration agreements, the rules for the creation of an arbitration commission, the requirements for arbitral awards and other aspects are investigated. The authors come to the conclusion that the regulations governing international commercial arbitration are similar in the two countries and are based on international law and national legal acts. Both Russia and China have adopted the norms outlined in the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law into their legal systems although to different degrees. Both countries provide similar arbitration agreement norms and support the arbitration clause autonomy principle. The difference lies in the fact that China does not follow the competence-competence principle (the arbitrators’ power to determine their own competence to consider a certain dispute). Instead, the issue is referred either to the arbitration commission or to the state court for resolution. On the other hand, arbitrators in Russia have the right to determine their competence by themselves. According to Chinese law, a party requires arbitration court mediation in order to be able to submit a request for provisional protection measures to the state court, while under Russian law adirect request is allowed. In China, the norms for the recognition and enforcement of aforeign arbitration award by the court do not provide for the court’s ruling to be challenged; the refusal of the recognition and enforcement shall be possible only after the award has been considered by the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China. In Russia, the legislation allows for both challenging and refusing the decision to recognize and enforce the award.
Abstract
This overview illustrates that there is a gap in our knowledge of how domestic courts handle investor-State disputes. As it turns out, some foreign investors use the domestic courts of the ...host State prior to initiating investment treaty arbitration. Subject matter-wise, these cases are very diverse and not all of them are initiated by investors against the host State. Moreover, in the four countries analysed, investors often appealed to the highest courts of the land, but they lost more cases than they won. These findings should help UNCITRAL Working Group III conceptualize the meaning of "investor-State dispute" and the relationship between domestic and international methods of ISDS. This overview concludes by inviting further empirical research to understand how domestic courts handle investor-State disputes. This in turn can help us develop normative arguments as to why domestic courts should be included in the reform process.
Abstract
The multilateral expression of the desire to reform investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) at the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) obscures the diverging ...preferences states have in respect of which future dispute settlement model to adopt. In order to garner broad acceptability, this article proposes that the reformed system could be designed as "dispute settlement à la carte", with a Multilateral Investment Court coexisting with other forms of dispute resolution under the umbrella of one multilateral institution. With a view to showing that such a system is feasible, this article draws on comparative institutional design analysis, that is, a comparative assessment of dispute settlement design features across different international dispute settlement systems. This approach helps to explore what institutional design features are a useful source of inspiration for a future investment dispute settlement system that preserves flexibility for states in the choice of their preferred means of adjudication, while safeguarding legal certainty and promoting coherence in investment dispute settlement.
In an international arbitration, the parties have a right to designate an appointing authority that will select and appoint the arbitrators in case the parties cannot agree on their appointment, and ...decide on challenges to arbitrators. However, if the parties lack experience, knowledge or are simply not careful enough, they can make wrong designations which result in appointing authorities that are not neutral. Sometimes, also, errors in drafting clauses that designate the appointing authority lead to imperfections and incoherence, which may frustrate the parties' choice of the appointing authority and adversely affect the entire arbitration. This paper examines the operation of arbitration clauses designating appointing authorities on two relatively recent examples from the combined UNCITRAL-ICC practice, with the aim to identify potential problems arising from wrong and imperfect designations and to suggest solutions.
The aim of the paper was to investigate the independence of the arbitration clause from the main contract in the International Commercial Arbitration Law of Iran with a comparative study in the ...UNCITRAL model law. The effectiveness of this type of procedure, its coordination with the specific objectives and the special status of international traders has led to their increasing willingness to use this legal solution. We use a comparative method, quasi-experimental, to describe similarities and differences in variables in two or more existing groups in a natural setting; it resembles an experiment as it uses manipulation but lacks random assignment of individual subjects. This study begins analyzing international arbitration and the UNCITRAL model rules (Chapters I to VI), then reviewing the national arbitration (Chapter V); thus, the effects of the principle of independence of the arbitration clause can be seen (Chapter VII) and, later, the problems that arise (Chapters VIII to X). Even so, the main conclusion is that the parties usually agree to resolve their international disputes through arbitration, which is judged privately and universally accepted.
This paper tackles the Draft Instrument on the Judicial Sale of Ships that is currently being prepared at UNCITRAL, focusing mainly on the conditions for the judicial sale of a ship conducted in one ...State Party to have effects in another Contracting State (including the definition of “clean title”, the notion of ship, and problematic aspects of the sale). The article considers particularly the background of the UNCITRAL Instrument and the conditions (scope of application) for the domestic judicial sale of ships to have international effect under the Convention, paying special attention to one of the most important requirements to issue a certificate of judicial sale (conferring clean title to the ship).
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