The Arbitration Act 2010 came into force in June 2010. It applies to all arbitrations in Ireland, both nationally and internationally. The Act adopts the Model Rules published by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNICTIRAL). Arbitration proceedings initiated prior to June 2010 will be conducted under the previous legislation, the Arbitration Acts 1954-1980. Arbitration proceedings commenced after that date shall be conducted in accordance with the 2010 Act and the Model Rules. Virtually all major trading countries in the world are parties to the Convention, while relatively few countries have an extensive network for the cross-border enforcement of judgments. In addition, arbitral awards are not limited to damages. While, in a cross-border context, only monetary decisions of national courts are generally enforceable, it is theoretically possible (although unusual in practice) to obtain an enforceable order on the enforcement of a specific arbitration proceeding under the New York Convention. When negotiating the terms of the arbitration agreement, the parties generally decided whether or not to hold oral proceedings. In the absence of consensus, the Code provides for the arbitrator to rule on footnote 25. The conduct of hearings must be fully accessible to all parties to the arbitration, and each participant must be duly informed of each session of the tribunal to consider the evidence to be presented as evidence in footnote 26. The main law applicable to arbitration is usually contained either in national private international law law (as in Switzerland) or in a separate arbitration law (as in England, the Republic of Korea and Jordan[20]). In addition, a number of national procedural laws may also contain provisions on arbitration.
Arbitration is a private method of dispute resolution in which the parties have agreed that their dispute will be heard and decided by an arbitrator rather than a judge in court. Arbitration is often referred to as “alternative dispute resolution”, i.e. an alternative to contacting a court. In many ways, arbitration and litigation are similar, but there are important differences that we will highlight throughout this article. By far the most important international instrument on arbitration is the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, generally referred to simply as the “New York Convention”. Virtually all major trading countries are signatories, and only a handful of countries are not parties to the New York Convention. In Canada, arbitration is regulated by law. Each province and territory has its own arbitration laws Footnote 1. At the federal level, commercial arbitration is governed by the Commercial Arbitration Act Footnote 2 (ACA), which came into force on August 10, 1986. The CAA is an abbreviated statute primarily intended to introduce the Commercial Arbitration Code (“the Code”), which is an appendix to the CAA and provides a basic procedural framework for commercial arbitration.
The Code applies to all commercial arbitrations in which at least one of the parties is a federal department or Crown corporation, or with respect to admiralty or maritime law matters where the place of arbitration is Canada. Footnote 3 The Code is explained in more detail in this module. To better understand how arbitration works, it may be beneficial to compare arbitration to disputes and other alternative dispute resolution methods. The Arbitration Act imposes a duty on the arbitral tribunal to act fairly and impartially between the parties by giving each party a reasonable opportunity to present its arguments and respond to those of its opponent. The arbitral tribunal shall have the power to use procedures appropriate to the circumstances of the case in order to avoid unnecessary delays or costs and to provide a fair means of resolving the dispute. In U.S. arbitration, there is modest but significant jurisprudence dealing with the power of courts to intervene when an arbitrator`s decision is fundamentally contrary to the principles of applicable law or the Treaty. [41] However, this jurisprudence has been called into question by recent Supreme Court decisions. [42] (e) A declaration may not be modified if it does not fall within the scope of the arbitration agreement.
There are several arbitration bodies, including the American Arbitration Association and JAMS. The National Arbitration Forum also conducts arbitrations, but no longer conducts consumer arbitration under a 2009 consent decree because it was proven to have bias against credit card companies and incentives that favored credit card companies over cardholders. The AAA was also ordered to leave the store,[22] but did not. The arbitrator is usually a highly experienced lawyer (often a retired judge) appointed by mutual agreement between the parties to hear the case. A unique feature of arbitration is that the arbitrator can be assisted by experts to help evaluate complex technical evidence. In ordinary disputes, a judge would not benefit from this type of assistance and would have to rely on the evidence of the parties` own experts. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) of 1925 establishes public policy in favor of arbitration. For the first six decades of its existence, courts did not allow arbitration for “federal claims” through a clear doctrine of “non-arbitration,” but in the 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law and began using it to require arbitration if it was included in the contract for federal claims. [21] While some legal scholars believe that it was originally intended to apply only to federal courts, courts now routinely require arbitration under the FAA, regardless of state laws or state court decisions on the unreasonableness of public policy. [21] In consumer law, standard contracts often contain mandatory pre-litigation arbitration clauses requiring consumer arbitration.