Publications

The recent decision of the Hague District Court in Friends of the Earth v Royal Dutch Shell marks the first instance where a duty was cast on a corporation to reduce its carbon emissions. Consequently, this decision is significant in the efforts to create a regime of corporate emissions liability. Little attention, however, has been spent on how this decision treats legal entities. In holding Royal Dutch Shell responsible for Shell…

One of India’s many fiscal challenges this budget season relates almost entirely to how the law is read on retrospective taxation. What hangs in the balance is over INR 50,000 crore or more that may be owed to the exchequer by Cairn Energy Plc and Vodafone BV — both international disputes having resulted in recent arbitral awards that have ruled against India on the issue (the ​“Retrospective Tax Awards”). There is much, however, that…

This chapter examines how Indian courts administer due process guarantees at the post-award stage. Section §10.02 begins with an overview of the relevant normative framework and the sources of interpretation that Indian courts have drawn upon to determine the meaning of the different due process guarantees. Section §10.03 shows how this framework applies in practice by discussing examples of successful and unsuccessful recognition and…

First, after some discussion about its ambiguity, the Working Group ultimately decided to retain the phrase ​‘de jure or de facto’ as it wanted to ensure consistency with the 1976 UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules. The text of article 14 of the Model Law was based on article 13(2) of the Rules, which uses the phrase ​‘de jure or de facto’. Like article 14 of the Model Law, article 13(2) of the Rules permits an arbitrator to resign and withdraw…

Arbitrating corruption issues tends to highlight what has been called the paradox of arbitration, i.e., that arbitration must remain tethered to the very public authorities it seeks freedom from. And while friction is perhaps inevitable with public illegalities being addressed in what are essentially private procedures, it is also a useful litmus test of arbitration’s fitness to deal with rapidly expanding frontiers. This paper…