George A. Bermann, who is the Gellhorn Professor of Law & Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law at Columbia University School of Law, has published The “Gateway” Problem in International Commercial Arbitration in the last issue of the Yale Journal of International Law.

Participants in international commercial arbitration have long recognized the need to maintain arbitration as an effective and therefore attractive alternative to litigation, while still ensuring that its use is predicated on the consent of the parties and that the resulting awards command respect. A priori, at least, all participants—parties, counsel, arbitrators, arbitral institutions—have an interest in ensuring that arbitration delivers the various advantages associated with it, notably speed, economy, informality, technical expertise, and avoidance of national fora, while producing awards that withstand judicial challenge and otherwise enjoy legitimacy.

National courts play a potentially important policing role in this regard. Most jurisdictions have committed their courts to do all that is reasonably necessary to support the arbitral process. Among the ways courts do so is by ensuring that arbitral proceedings are initiated and pursued in a timely and effective manner. But those same courts are commonly asked by a party resisting arbitration to intervene at the very outset to declare that a prospective arbitration lacks an adequate basis in party consent. No legal system that permits the arbitration of at least some disputes (and most do) is immune to the possibility that its courts will become engaged in an inquiry of that sort at the very threshold of arbitration. Each must decide how, at this early stage, to promote arbitration as an effective alternative to litigation, while at the same time ensuring that any order issued by a court compelling arbitration is supported by a valid and enforceable agreement to arbitrate. The challenge consists of identifying those issues that courts—in the interest of striking the proper balance between these two objectives—properly address at what is increasingly known, in common U.S. parlance, as the “gateway” of arbitration. This “gateway” problem is the focus of the present Article.

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The Center for International Law and Justice (Odessa, Ukraine) is pleased to invite law schools to compete in the 3rd International Moot Competition on Maritime Arbitration.   This year the moot case concerns number of issues at the forefront of economy affairs. Prominent Ukrainian Law Firm “International Law Offices” have kindly provided the Center with Moot Case […]

Luca G. Radicati di Brozolo, who is a professor of law at the Catholic University of Milan and a partner at Bonelli Erede Pappalardo, has posted

Uganda Telecom Ltd v Hi-Tech Telecom Pty Ltd