Originally from World Arbitration And Mediation Review (WAMR)

The Tribunal deliberates on the respective applications including whether it has the power to remove or sanction counsel.

LUCY REED – TRIBUNAL CHAIR: Gentlemen, that was most interesting, indeed, more interesting than some of the things I saw in my agency days. We have got some hard decisions to make on some hard issues and what I would really like to know, I am going to look you in the eye, I want to know where everyone stands on these issues. Let us start with questions of principle. Do we even have a power to remove counsel? What do we know? There is nothing in the ICSID Rules about it. Second, there is nothing in other institution rules as far, as I know. We considered this in the new Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre Rules, but, in the end, it was not kept in explicitly. We also know that some arbitrators, in their procedural orders, now do include a requirement that each side notify the Tribunal immediately about a change in counsel and allow the Tribunal to refuse to accept new counsel to avoid conflicts, but we do not have that in our procedural orders. We also know that such a power is included in the new IBA Guidelines, but the parties here explicitly have not agreed to be governed by those. The question has to be whether we have an inherent power to exclude counsel. What do you think, Pierre?