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I include the following considerations attending exclusively to my personal interest. Considering that I am not a lawyer, I may be mesmerized by concepts you may find simply obvious…

Do not take this as the transcription of what was said or the real personal oppinions of those cited, but what I understood.

Opening Adress

As an introductory address Prof. Carmine Punzi, chairman at I.S.S.A., refers to the need of a harmonization in the way that evidences are treated in international arbitration. He points that even with the help of UNCITRAL Model Law and IBA Rules of Evidence, the differences between legal cultures make this harmonization a long term goal.

When he refers to differences between legal cultures, he is referring mainly to civil vs. common law, but also to other issues in a country to country basis, citing French law’s position in regard to witnesses as an example.

While this harmonization doesn’t happen, Prof. Punzi points that it has to be arbitrators who have to get to a balance for every case, keeping in sight what the agreements of the parties are and assuring a due process.

Ms. Francesca Mazza, Counsel at ICC International Court makes a brief introduction and reminds the origin of arbitrator, from the latin “arbiter”, “a witness, judge, literally one who goes and see” (ar for ad “to” plus betere “to come”).

Mr. Mauro Ferranti, Secretary General at the Italian Arbitration Assotiation, also makes a brief introduction and Mr. Giorgio Santacroce, president of the Court of Appeal of Rome points that there’s a lack of in depth analysis of evidence in international arbitration. From Mr Santacroce point of view, the lack of analysis and consensus puts the problem in hands of the arbitrators, but this problem ends being transferred to the jurisdiction if the award is challenged.

Continue reading “The Taking of Evidence in International Arbitration: considerations”

Tags: evidence, international arbitration

I am back from Rome, where I’ve had the opportunity to attend to the seminar “The Taking of Evidence in International Arbitration” organized by the Istituto Superiore Di Studi Sull’ Arbitrato (I.S.S.A.)  and ICC-WBO International Court of Arbitration.

The program was very solid and it delivered even more than expected.

All presentations were direct and to the point, but if I had to choose only one, I would say the presentation of Prof. Piero Bernardini summarized very well most of the problems that evidences face in international arbitration.

Being the talks about technical matters, and to my surprise, presentations in Italian were very easy to follow to me. Or maybe I didn’t get it too well, you will know by the following posts in which I will discuss them in detail.

I want to express my congratulations to the organizers and presenters for trying to shed some light in this very important subject.

Why do I think it is that important?

Because there’s a permeability of legal concepts between different legal cultures and this is happening in a very unstructured-uncontrolled way. Different actors in legal systems are more aware of concepts that are alien to them, sometimes because they hear about them and aren’t able to put them into the proper context, sometimes because parties in local conflicts are in fact multinational entities with an own huge inertia when it comes to litigation.

The concepts “expert witness” or “discovery” come to my mind as clear examples.

In the coming years I think that we will see a double effect to that “awareness”: first in the short term, in international arbitration the tendency that procedural rules in general and evidence rules in particular have to converge both “de jure” and “de facto” will grow; second in the long term local legal systems will adapt, adopt and maybe mutate to fit this reality, not without tensions, but I hope that at least this will happen keeping a proper coherence and context.

Tags: evidence, international arbitration