Originally from Inside the Black Box: How Arbitral Tribunals Operate and Reach Their Decisions - ASA Special Series No. 42

BERNHARD BERGER:

Panel 2 is about conflicts in deliberations. It will particularly also cover the dissenting opinions that have caught much attention already this morning. Panel 2 is chaired by Markus Wirth. I do not have to introduce him to this audience as our immediate past-president of ASA.

MARKUS WIRTH:

First of all, please excuse my voice; it is the remnant of the flu but since this is the show of my co-panellists much more than mine that should not be a problem.

I am pleased to introduce Panel 2 and particularly the topic of Panel 2. As far as the panellists are concerned, I would like to refer you to their detailed CVs which you will find in the conference binder. Generally what Julian has said with respect to the composition of Panel 1 applies one to one to this panel. We have a richness of experience here on this panel in terms of legal background and variety of legal activity, academic and as practitioners: we have Phillip Capper representing the common law view; we have Pierre Mayer from Paris; and we have Bernhard Meyer from Zurich.

When I look at their CVs and add the cases I had with my colleagues up here, I think we can profit from a combined experience gathered in several hundred deliberations. That promises, hopefully, to provide a very interesting discussion of our topic.

The topic is conflict in the deliberations: dealing with bias and obstruction. How will we go about it? We divided the topic into three sub-topics. The first sub-topic is how to deal with bias and obstruction: what are the typical situations of arbitrators’ misconduct, bias or obstruction, how to react to such situations and, as a further issue, should misconduct, excessive bias and/or obstruction be reported and, if yes, when, by whom and to whom?