Views
The U.S. Arbitration-Litigation Paradox
The U.S. Supreme Court is well-known for its liberal pro-arbitration policy. In The Arbitration-Litigation Paradox, forthcoming in the Vanderbilt Law Review, I argue that the U.S. Supreme Court’s supposedly pro-arbitration stance isn’t as pro-arbitration as it seems. This is because the Court’s hostility to litigation gets in the way of courts’ ability to support arbitration—especially international commercial arbitration.
This is the arbitration-litigation paradox in the United States: On one hand, the U.S. Supreme Court’s hostility to litigation seems to complement its pro-arbitration policy. Rising barriers to U.S. court access in general, and in particular in transnational cases (as I have explored elsewhere), seems consistent with a U.S. Supreme Court that embraces arbitration as an efficient method for enforcing disputes. Often, enforcement of arbitration clauses in these cases leads to closing off access to courts, as Myriam Gilles and others have documented.
But there’s a problem. As is perhaps obvious to experts, arbitration relies on courts—for enforcing arbitration agreements and awards, and for helping pending arbitration do what it needs to do. So closing off access to courts can close access to the litigation that supports arbitration. And indeed, recent Supreme Court cases narrowing U.S. courts’ personal jurisdiction over foreign defendants have been applied to bar arbitral award enforcement actions. Courts have also relied on forum non conveniens to dismiss award-enforcement actions.
That’s one way in which trends that limit litigation can have negative effects on the system of arbitration. But there’s another way that the Court’s hostility to litigation interacts with its pro-arbitration stance, and that’s in the arbitration cases themselves.
The Supreme Court has a busy arbitration docket, but rarely hears international commercial arbitration cases. Instead, it hears domestic arbitration cases in which it often states that the “essence” of arbitration is that it is speedy, inexpensive, individualized, and efficient—everything that litigation is not.
(As an aside, this description of the stark distinction between arbitration and litigation is widely stated, but it’s a caricature. The increasingly judicialized example of international commercial arbitration shows this is demonstrably false. As practiced today, international commercial arbitration can be neither fast, nor cheap, nor informal.)
But in the United States, arbitration law is mostly trans-substantive. That means that decisions involving consumer or employment contracts often apply equally to the next case involving insurance contracts or international commercial contracts.
In the paper, I argue that the Court’s tendency to focus on arbitration’s “essential” characteristics, and to enforce these artificial distinctions between arbitration and litigation, can be harmful for the next case involving international commercial arbitration. It could undermine the likelihood of enforcement of arbitration awards where the arbitral procedure resembled litigation or deviated from the Court’s vision of the “essential virtues” of arbitration.
To prevent this result, I argue that any revisions of the U.S. Federal Arbitration Act should pay special attention not only to fixing the rules about consumer and employment arbitration, but also to making sure that international commercial arbitration is properly supported. In the meantime, lower federal courts should pay no heed to the Supreme Court’s seeming devotion to enforcing false distinctions between arbitration and litigation, particularly in the international commercial context.
In 2018, the Dutch Supreme Court found a Spanish judgment applicable in the Netherlands, based on the Hague Convention on the International Protection of Adults. Minor detail: neither the Netherlands nor Spain is a party to this Convention.
Written by Dr. Anneloes Kuiper, Assistant Professor at Utrecht University, the Netherlands
In 2018, the Dutch Supreme Court found a Spanish judgment applicable in the Netherlands, based on the Hague Convention on the International Protection of Adults. Minor detail: neither the Netherlands nor Spain is a party to this Convention.
Applicant in this case filed legal claims before a Dutch court of first instance in 2012. In 2013, a Spanish Court put Applicant under ‘tutela’ and appointed her son (and applicant in appeal) as her ‘tutor’. Defendants claimed that, from that moment on, Applicant was incompetent to (further) appeal the case and that the tutor was not (timely) authorized by the Dutch courts to act on Applicant’s behalf. One of the questions before the Supreme Court was whether the decision by the Spanish Court must be acknowledged in the Netherlands.
In its judgment, the Dutch Supreme Court points out that the Convention was signed, but not ratified by the Netherlands. Nevertheless, article 10:115 in the Dutch Civil Code is (already) reserved for the application of the Convention. Furthermore, the Secretary of the Department of Justice has explained that the reasons for not ratifying the Convention are of a financial nature: execution of the Convention requires time and resources, while encouraging the ‘anticipatory application’ of the HCIPA seems to be working just as well. Because legislator and government seem to support the (anticipatory) application of the Convention, the Supreme Court does as well and, for the same reasons, has no objection to applying the Convention when the State whose ruling is under discussion is not a party to the treaty either (i.e. Spain).
This ‘anticipatory application’ was – although as such unknown in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties – used before in the Netherlands. While in 1986 the Rome Convention was not yet into force, the Dutch Supreme Court applied article 4 Rome Convention in an anticipatory way to determine the applicable law in a French-Dutch purchase-agreement. In this case, the Supreme Court established two criteria for anticipatory application, presuming it concerns a multilateral treaty with the purpose of establishing uniform rules of international private law:
- No essential difference exists between the international treaty rule and the customary law that has been developed under Dutch law;
- the treaty is to be expected to come into force in the near future.
In 2018, the Supreme Court seems to follow these criteria. These criteria have pro’s and con’s, I’ll name one of each. The application of a signed international treaty is off course to be encouraged, and the Vienna Convention states that after signature, no actions should be taken that go against the subject and purpose of the treaty. Problem is, if every State applies a treaty ‘anticipatory’ in a way that is not too much different from its own national law – criterion 1 – the treaty will be applied in as many different ways as there are States party to it. Should it take some time before the treaty comes into force, there won’t be much ‘uniform rules’ left.
The decision ECLI:NL:HR:2018:147 (in Dutch) is available here.
The Netherlands Commercial Court holds its first hearing!
Written by Georgia Antonopoulou and Xandra Kramer, Erasmus University Rotterdam (PhD candidate and PI ERC consolidator project Building EU Civil Justice)
Only six weeks after its establishment, the Netherlands Commercial Court (NCC) held its first hearing today, 18 February 2019 (see our previous post on the creation of the NCC). The NCC’s maiden case Elavon Financial Services DAC v. IPS Holding B.V. and others was heard in summary proceedings and concerned an application for court permission to sell pledged shares (see here). The application was filed on 11 February and the NCC set the hearing date one week later, thereby demonstrating its commitment to offer a fast and efficient forum for international commercial disputes.
The parties’ contract entailed a choice of forum clause in favour of the court in Amsterdam. However, according to the new Article 30r (1) of the Dutch Code of Civil Procedure and Article 1.3.1. of the NCC Rules an action may be initiated in the NCC if the Amsterdam District Court has jurisdiction to hear the action and the parties have expressly agreed in writing to litigate in English before the NCC. Lacking an agreement in the initial contract, the parties in Elavon Financial Services DAC v. IPS Holding B.V. subsequently agreed by separate agreement to bring their case before the newly established chamber and thus to litigate in English, bearing the NCC’s much higher, when compared to the regular Dutch courts, fees. Unlike other international commercial courts which during their first years of functioning were ‘fed’ with cases transferred from other domestic courts or chambers, the fact that the parties in the present case directly chose the NCC is a positive sign for the court’s future case flow.
As we have reported on this blog before, the NCC is a specialized chamber of the Amsterdam District Court, established on 1 January 2019. It has jurisdiction in international civil and commercial disputes, on the basis of a choice of court agreement. The entire proceedings are in English, including the pronouncement of the judgment. Judges have been selected from the Netherlands on the basis of their extensive experience with international commercial cases and English language skills. The Netherlands Commercial Court of Appeal (NCCA) complements the NCC on appeal. Information on the NCC, a presentation of the court and the Rules of Procedure are available on the website of the Dutch judiciary. It advertises the court well, referring to “the reputation of the Dutch judiciary, which is ranked among the most efficient, reliable and transparent worldwide. And the Netherlands – and Amsterdam in particular – are a prime location for business, and a gateway to Europe.” Since a number of years, the Dutch civil justice system has been ranked no. 1 in the WJP Rule of Law Index.
In part triggered by the uncertainties of Brexit and the impact this may have on the enforcement of English judgments in Europe in particular, more and more EU Member States have established or are about to establish international commercial courts with a view to accommodating and attracting high-value commercial disputes (see also our previous posts here and here). Notable similar initiatives in Europe are the ‘Frankfurt Justice Initiative’ (for previous posts see here and here) and the Brussels International Business Court (see here). While international commercial courts are mushrooming in Europe, a proposal for a European Commercial Court has also come to the fore so as to effectively compete with similar courts outside Europe (see here and here).
News
RabelsZ: New issue alert (1/2023)
The latest issue of RabelsZ has just been published. It contains the following articles:
Holger Fleischer: Große Debatten im Gesellschaftsrecht: Fiktionstheorie versus Theorie der realen Verbandspersönlichkeit im internationalen Diskurs, pp. 5–45, DOI: 10.1628/rabelsz-2023-0003
Great Debates in Company Law: The International Discourse on Fiction Theory versus Real Entity Theory. – This article opens a new line of research on great debates in domestic and foreign company law. It uses as a touchstone the classical debate on the nature of legal personhood, which was moribund for a time but has recently experienced an unexpected renaissance. The article traces the scholarly fate of fiction theory and real entity theory over time and across jurisdictions. It describes the origins of both theories, explores the processes of their reception in foreign legal systems, and through selected case studies illustrates the areas in which both courts and doctrine to this day have continued to draw on their body of arguments.
Sabine Corneloup: Migrants in Transit or Under Temporary Protection – How Can Private International Law Deal with Provisional Presence?, pp.46–75, DOI: 10.1628/rabelsz-2023-0004
An increasing number of migrants are provisionally present in the territory of a State other than their State of origin, be it because they are granted temporary protection until they can return to their country of origin or because migration policies– notably externalization measures– prevent them from accessing the territory of their State of destination. As a result, many migrants are stuck for months, if not years, in transit countries at the external borders of Europe before being able to resume their migratory route. Their provisional presence, which initially was meant to remain transitional and short-term, often becomes indefinite. In the meantime, life goes on: children are born, couples marry and divorce, parental child abductions take place, etc. How can private international law deal with these situations? The 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention, which requires that the personal status of refugees be governed by the law of domicile or residence, does not provide an answer to all difficulties. The paper aims to explore PIL connecting factors, such as nationality, habitual residence, and mere presence, and assess their appropriateness for migrants on the move or under temporary protection.
Hannes Wais: Digitale Persönlichkeitsrechtsverletzungen und anwendbares Recht, pp.76–117, DOI: 10.1628/rabelsz-2023-0005
Digital Infringement of Personality Rights and the Applicable Law. – Under art. 4 para. 1 Rome II Regulation, the law applicable to torts is the law of the state in which the damage occurred. With respect to the violation of personality rights, however, art. 40 para. 1 EGBGB points to the law of the place where the event giving rise to the damage occurred (sent. 1) or, should the victim so decide, the place where the damage occurred (sent. 2). This essay demonstrates that this approach entails an element of unequal treatment and is inconsistent with German substantive law, which tends to favour the tortfeasor over the victim in personality rights cases. These findings give reason to subject the German conflict-of-law rules regarding the infringement of personality rights (which almost exclusively take place online) to an expansive review. The article first discusses the exclusion of personality rights infringements in art. 1 para. 2 lit. g Rome II Regulation and the dormant reform initiative, followed by an analysis of the shortcomings of the solution laid down in art. 40 para. 1 EGBGB. Alternative approaches are subsequently discussed before concluding with a proposal de lege ferenda.
Zheng Sophia TANG: Smart Courts in Cross-Border Litigation, pp. 118–143, DOI: 10.1628/rabelsz-2023-0006
Smart courts use modern technology to improve the efficiency of trials, enabling the parties to access court proceedings from a distance. This advantage is particularly important in cross-border litigation, which is characterised by the cost and inconvenience for at least one party to take part in proceedings abroad. However, although technology can significantly improve procedural efficiency, legal obstacles make efficiency impossible to achieve. This article uses service of proceedings, collecting evidence and virtual hearing as examples to show how the current law, especially the old-fashioned concept of sovereignty, hampers the functioning of technology. In the age of technology, it is necessary to reconceptualise sovereignty. This article argues that private autonomy may be utilised to reshape sovereignty in cross-border litigation procedures and reconcile the conflict between sovereignty and technology.
IEAF Call for Papers: The Perpetual Renewal of European Insolvency Law
The INSOL Europe Academic Forum (IEAF) is inviting submission for its 19th annual conference, taking place from Wednesday 11 – Thursday 12 October 2023 in Amsterdam (the Netherlands). Expressions of interest are invited for the delivery of research papers within the overall theme of the academic conference: “The Perpetual Renewal of European Insolvency Law”.
The conference is intended to focus on, inter alia, the following overall topics:
- Public and social policy and the impact on corporate rescue, and vice versa
- Cross-border issues (recognition, coordination)
- Asset tracing (including crypto assets)
- Competition for cases as a driving force for legislative reform
- International organisations update
- Sustainability and corporate restructuring
- Environmental claims in insolvency
- Transaction avoidance eclipsed in preventive restructuring procedures
- Pre-packs rehabilitated
- Asset partitioning: prudent entrepreneurship or manifestation of opportunism
- Modern issues surrounding directors’ duties to file for insolvency
- The impact and benefit (or not) of creditors’ committees
- EU Preventive Restructuring Directive
The IEAF board also invites submissions on other topics that fall with in the scope of the overall theme of the conference.
Conference methodology
In line with the practice established in our past academic conferences, the intention for the autumn conference is to have research papers that challenge existing approaches, stimulate debate and ask, and attempt to answer, comparative and interdisciplinary questions within the above broadly defined theme. Accordingly, proposals are invited that do more than just outline a topic of interest in respect of any given jurisdiction, but seek to understand, analyse and critique the fundamentals of insolvency and restructuring systems in ways that are relevant across jurisdictions and across fields of academic inquiry. Contributions must be in English.
Presenting at the IEAF conference
Expressions of interest in delivering a paper should be sent by email on or before 1 March 2023 to the IEAF’s Deputy Chair, Dr. Jennifer Gant.
Authors of papers selected for presentation will benefit from a waiver of the participation fee for the academic conference, however, they will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs. A limited number of travel grants are available for junior scholars invited to present.
For further information, see: www.insol-europe.org/academic-forum-events
The New Age of Dispute Resolution: Digitization & Evolving Norms
The New Age of Dispute Resolution: Digitization & Evolving Norms
Time: 18:30 – 20:30 pm
Venue: Bracewell LLP New York
When: 13 February Monday 2023
Organized with New York International Arbitration Centre, New York State Bar Association, and American Society of International Law
The event will be held in relation to UNCITRAL’s project on the Stocktaking of Dispute Resolution in the Digital Economy. As part of its stocktaking activities to seek inputs from different parts of the world, the Secretariat is organising this discussion with practitioners and academics in New York on two respective issues: (1) the use of technology in arbitration; and (2) online mediation. Presenters: (Panel 1) Christina Hioureas, Emma Lindsay, Hagit Muriel Elul, Martin Guys and Sherman W. Kahn; (Panel 2) Jackie Nolan-Haley and Sherman W. Kahn.