Available now: the ICCA Yearbook Commercial Arbitration XLVI
A Message from General Editor ICCA Publications Prof. Dr. Stephan Schill.
The 2021 volume of the ICCA Yearbook Commercial Arbitration is available in the Kluwer International eStore, as well as online on the KluwerArbitration database. The largest Yearbook ever, it contains 20 so far unpublished arbitral awards and 100 court decisions that apply the 1958 New York Convention and the 1965 Washington (ICSID) Convention or address issues of general interest to the practice of international commercial arbitration.
Arbitral awards
The 2021 Yearbook also contains a broad selection of anonymized arbitral awards. Ten awards rendered by tribunals under the auspices of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (SCC) address a variety of procedural and substantive law issues. For instance, one award addressed whether the claimant could withdraw his claim unilaterally under the SCC Expedited Arbitration Rules after refusing to comply with the arbitrator’s order to give security for costs. Another case, involving a dispute about the supply of hardware and software systems for mining cryptocurrencies, dealt with the validity of an SCC clause in an allegedly nominal contract, which the defendant claimed was made only for customs clearance purposes. Six awards included in the Yearbook were rendered under the rules of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), covering inter alia the application of United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), various INCOTERMS, and the allocation of costs. Four major awards rendered by tribunals under the rules of the Cairo Regional Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (CRCICA) concerned contracts for the supply of commodities, and dealt with a variety of notorious issues in international arbitration, namely the effect of parallel arbitration proceedings, the application of arbitration agreements to nonsignatory parties, res judicata, corruption, and force majeure.
Highlights in court decisions
Among the highlights are an update of fourteen court decisions from the PR China and five decisions from Belarus that apply the New York Convention, as well as Convention cases from previously unreported countries, notably Costa Rica, Cuba and Iran. The reporting covers, amongst others, the discussion by the French Supreme Court in Antrix v. Devas of whether the arbitration clause in a contract between two Indian parties providing for arbitration in India in accordance with either the ICC or the UNCITRAL Rules was “pathological” and could not be enforced. The Yearbook also contains the landmark decision of the UK Supreme Court in Halliburton, in which the Court found that an arbitrator in a London-seated arbitration did not need to be disqualified due to the arbitrator’s failure to disclose an appointment in related arbitrations, since a fair-minded and informed observer would not conclude that there was a real possibility of bias. Further, the Yearbook contains a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court that provided an overview of the different theories on when an award becomes binding and is hence enforceable under the New York Convention. Moreover, three decisions of the European Court of Human Rights are included in the Yearbook that dealt with how the fair trial guarantees in Art. 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights apply to international arbitration proceedings. Finally, several decisions in the Yearbook engage with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recent developments and publications
The 2021 volume also contains announcements of new arbitration rules and of recent developments in the law and practice of several countries, as well as an extensive bibliography.