Originally from Navigating Maritime Arbitration: The Experts Speak - Second Edition

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I. INTRODUCTION

In many cases, once an arbitration award is issued, the losing party accepts its lumps and pays the award, promptly and in full.  At times, however, it is not so simple. The losing party may consider that the award is unfair or wrongly decided, or it may simply refuse or be unable to pay.  In such cases, each party has decisions to make. For the prevailing party, the question is where and how to attempt to turn the arbitration award into money, and for the losing party, it is where and how to try to prevent that from happening. This chapter addresses these issues. 

When a party wishes to enforce or challenge an arbitral award, a number of threshold questions invariably arise: What kind of award is it:  final, partial final or interlocutory? Where was the award issued, and where can it be enforced or challenged? What law applies? These threshold questions must be understood and analyzed before a party can make a determination how to proceed.

A. The Federal Arbitration Act

First, some terminology:  When we speak of maritime arbitral awards in the United States we could mean one of three kinds: (1) “Domestic” awards, (2) “Nondomestic” awards, or (3) “Foreign” awards. This distinction is important, because it controls what law applies to matters of recognition and enforcement. To understand the source and importance of these distinctions, we must start with the Federal Arbitration Act (the “FAA”).