Available now: the ICCA Yearbook Commercial Arbitration XLVII

The 2022 volume of the Yearbook Commercial Arbitration is now available in print, as well as online on the KluwerArbitration database. It contains 16 so far unpublished arbitral awards and 97 court decisions that apply the 1958 New York Convention, the 1965 Washington (ICSID) Convention, and the 1975 Panama (Inter-American) Convention, or address issues of general interest to the practice of international commercial arbitration.

 

Highlights in court decisions

Among the highlights are twelve court decisions from the People’s Republic of China, which, together with the fifteen decisions published in 2021, substantially update the Yearbook’s reporting from this jurisdiction. This year’s volume also features three cases that offer an insight into the application of the New York Convention by the courts of Pakistan, and, for the first time, three decisions rendered on the New York Convention by the courts of El Salvador.

 

The reporting covers among other issues the relationship between constitutional law and international arbitration. The Constitutional Court of Colombia found the 2014 Colombia-France Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) to be constitutional on the condition that an interpretative declaration be adopted by Colombia and France to ensure that the BIT comply with the principles of equality, legal certainty, and maintenance of the State’s regulatory power contained in the Colombian Constitution. The German Federal Constitutional Court examined in on the condition that an interpretative declaration be adopted by Colombia and France to ensure that the BIT comply with the principles of equality, legal certainty, and maintenance of the State’s regulatory power contained in the Colombian Constitution. The German Federal Constitutional Court examined in Pechstein how the right to arbitrate and the right to effective legal protection, which are both protected under the German Constitution, relate to each other. Two decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union (see Komstroy and PL Holdings), dealt with the interaction between principles of EU constitutional law and investment treaty arbitration. Also included in the 2022 Yearbook are the decisions by the Supreme Court in the United Kingdom and and the French Cour de Cassation which reached opposite results in the dispute between Kabab Ji and Kout on the law applicable to an arbitration agreement contained in a contract governed by English law.

 

Arbitral awards

The selected ICC and SCC awards address issues such as the arbitrability of employment disputes, the interpretation of contractual terms, including arbitration clauses, the application of the CISG and Rome I and II Regulations, the public policy exception in the 1958 New York Convention, and negotiation as a condition precedent to arbitration.

 

Recent developments and publications

The 2022 volume further contains announcements of new arbitration rules and of recent developments in the law and practice of several countries, as well as an extensive bibliography.