Originally from Between East and West: Essays in Honour of Ulf Franke

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I. INTRODUCTION

From the time when one of us was a member of the Board of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (SCC), discussions with Ulf and the other members of the Board regarding challenging awards of the remuneration of arbitrators when determined by the SCC are well remembered. The Swedish Arbitration Act of 1929 Section 25 restricted the ability to challenge remuneration to the case when it had been decided by the arbitrators themselves. However, the wording of Section 41 LSF “remuneration of the arbitrators” (Sw: “ersättning till skiljemännen”) does not address the issue whether a challenge may be made even though the remuneration has been determined by a third party, such as an arbitration institute. However, it follows from statements in the preparatory works to Section 41 LSF that it would not apply when a decision on remuneration is made by an arbitration institute. Reference was made to remuneration determined by the Court of International Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce. It was the prevailing view that the statements in the preparatory works should be followed. But even among the Board of the SCC there were different opinions. It was strongly argued by some that the wording of Section 41 LSF differed from that of the previous Act and that statements in the preparatory works could not be used to set aside the wording. In principle, we agree that the unambiguous wording of a statute must be upheld, whatever statements to the contrary appear in the preparatory works. Thus, the words “remuneration of the arbitrators” should be interpreted in the context in which they appear and of LSF as a whole.