Originally from: Review of International Arbitral Awards

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I first wish to state that nothing I will say in the present paper will affect my judgment as Chairman of the ad hoc Committee in Vivendi v. Argentina.

I do not want to talk about the two decades old story of the ad hoc Committee in Klöckner’s first case against Cameroon. I m very proud of being associated with these annulment proceedings along with my dear friend and mentor Pierre Lalive and with my much regretted colleague and friend Ignaz Seidl-Hohenveldern. I am not at all disassociating myself from that case. Each of us in that Committee reached the same conclusion through different reasoning, but we all concurred on what the final outcome of the case had to be.

So, I will not discuss this further. Yet there is one point that I want to make. That is that in ICSID disputes, and in investment disputes in general, there is an important “non legal” lement that must be taken into account: the dynamics within the tribunal. I will even go as far as saying that the outcome of a case, of any case, depends on the composition of the arbitral tribunal and how well the three arbitrators work together.