ICC Bulletin

Welcome from the Editors-in-Chief

As a foreword to this edition, in Memoriam notes by Professors Jarrosson, Abdel Wahab and Comair-Obeid as well as from Sami Houerbi and Doyin Rhodes-Vivour SAN honor the indelible marks left by Pr. Philippe Kahn, Judge Borhan Amrallah, Samir Saleh, Pr. Mohamed Mernissi and Pr. Gabriel Olawoyin SAN in the field of international arbitration. Their loss is mourned by members of the international arbitration community around the globe.

As is customary now, the Bulletin opens with its Global Developments Section, which offers insightful updates on major jurisprudence arising from seven different jurisdictions on four continents, starting with Africa and recent case law from the Kenya Supreme Court acknowledging the right to appeal High Court decisions on set-aside applications. From another continent, the Canadian Supreme Court has reaffirmed and preserved the application of the competence-competence principle in the large majority of jurisdictional objections brought before an arbitral tribunal, including with respect to the invalidity of an arbitration agreement. In Asia, Hong-Kong courts have addressed the question of tribunals’ powers to make corrections to awards or issue additional awards in a set-aside procedure. Finally, in Europe: Austrian Courts have addressed the standards to be applied regarding the reasoning of arbitral awards; French courts have addressed both the issues of raising new jurisdictional arguments in set-aside procedures as well as the difficult assessment of the validity of arbitration clauses in franchise agreements; German courts have tackled the issue of the application of the CISG to arbitration agreements; and last, but certainly not least, we publish a note of the much-discussed Halliburton v. Chubb decision of the UK Supreme Court.

In the Commentary Section, we feature the three winning articles of the Nappert Prize of McGill University (2020 Edition) dealing with the role of the seat in smart contract disputes, the erosion of commercial law as a consequence of international commercial arbitration as well as the tackling of environmental issues in investment arbitration.

The ICC Practice and Procedure Section presents the highly anticipated launch of the 2021 ICC Rules of Arbitration.

The ICC Commission Reports Section includes questionnaires submitted to ICC National Committees for their feedback to benefit the ‘ADR and Arbitration’ Task Force and to provide an update of the Report on the use of ‘Information Technology in International Arbitration’.¹

The ICC Activities Section includes reports from five recent virtual conferences, namely the 18th ICC Miami Conference, an ICC YAF Session analyzing what makes a great arbitration law, a webinar on ICC experience in Romania with respect to international construction disputes, the launch of the recently released QMUL/PwC study of ICC awards on damages in international arbitration, and finally the AAA-ICC-ICSID 36th Triple Colloquium.

Finally, the Book Review Section presents an excellent review of the most recent ICC Institute Dossier ‘Explaining Why You Lost’.

We do hope that you will find this issue interesting and thought provoking, and as always, we thank our contributors, our Editorial Board members, Stéphanie Torkomyan, ICC Dispute Resolution Publications’ Manager, and Claire Héraud, Senior Publications Assistant (DRS_Publications@iccwbo.org).

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