Arbitration in Brazil has undergone a dramatic change over the

last two decades. Before that, Brazil, similarly to several other Latin

American jurisdictions, was known for its unfriendliness towards

international arbitration, especially due to its submission to the

“Calvo Doctrine”, according to which foreigners should not receive

any different treatment from the given to national citizens. At that

time, not even domestic arbitration was used in Brazil, particularly if

the conflicts involved sovereign parties. Since 1996, however, a new

arbitration-friendly legal framework has been implemented,

followed by an increasing body of case law, both in line with modern

arbitration laws that have been interpreted and applied in

traditional jurisdictions around the world.

 

 

Scanning the landscape of developments, and also creating room

for the involvement of State and State-owned companies, the current

legislative and judicial attitudes towards international and domestic

arbitration look extremely positive, deriving particularly from (i) the

Federal Supreme Court declaring the constitutionality of the

Brazilian Arbitration Law in 2001, (ii) the ratification of the New

York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign

Arbitral Awards in 2002, (iii) the Superior Court of Justice assuming

the role of conceding exequatur to foreign arbitration awards in

2004, (iv) the Superior Court of Justice’s expanding role as a

supportive last instance1 reviewer for arbitration-related decisions,

and (v) the regularly favourable decisions one now finds rendered

by local courts throughout Brazil as a whole.

 

 

During such period, the development of international and

domestic arbitration in Brazil has been intimately associated with

positive domestic factors, such as the economic growth and trade

liberalization that the country has been undergoing. This

prosperous scenario has been massively accentuated also due to the

pre-salt oil reserves discovered in the Brazilian coast, the

implementation of the Program for Acceleration of Growth (PAC)

towards infrastructure projects, and the hosting of the 2014 FIFA

World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, for instance. The

significant crisis that the judiciary system is facing for the last
decades, unfortunately, does also play a role in the spectrum.