Center co-hosts webinars on “The autonomous v nationalistic interpretation of the 1958 New York Convention”

The Center is glad to announce two webinars on “The autonomous v nationalistic interpretation of the 1958 New York Convention” to be hosted by the Center in collaboration with Oslo University. The webinars will be held on 21 and 25 January 2021; they will both start at noon and end at 1.30 pm Paris time.

As it is known, the 1958 New York Convention owes much of its success to being an international convention setting forth uniform rules. Its uniform recognition and enforcement regime not only lowers the parties’ costs of identifying under which circumstances an award will be recognized and enforced across jurisdictions; it also ensures that States cannot justify the failure to comply with their obligations under the New York Convention by reference to domestic law. Still, the courts of different contracting States apply the Convention differently. Oftentimes, this is due to the erroneous understanding of concepts employed by the drafters of the Convention. On the occasion of the two webinars, the presenters will examine whether a given concept must be interpreted autonomously rather than nationalistically, in light of domestic law, and, where this is the case, will attempt to define these autonomous concepts. The presentations will also identify which domestic law(s) to apply, to the extent that recourse to domestic law(s) is required.

On 21 January, the speakers (Burkhard Hess, Dennis Solomon, Winnie Ma and I) will address the autonomous interpretation in general, the notion of “arbitral award”, the arbitration agreement and issues of scope, as well as arbitrability.

On 25 January, the speakers (Francesca Ragno, Friedrich Rosenfeld, Giuditta Cordero-Moss, Lucas Lim) will tackle incapacity, the effect of deviations from the agreed upon procedure, the notion of “public policy’, and the procedure to enforce an arbitral award.

To register and for more info, please see the webinar’s flyer.