P. International Arbitration

This spring term offering, co-taught by international arbitration practitioners Viren Mascarenhas and Rahim Moloo, is designed to meet the needs of students seeking an opportunity to bridge theory and practice in the context of international arbitration (covering both commercial and investment arbitration). Unlike many courses in international arbitration (including the fall term courses in International Commercial Arbitration and International Investment Law and Arbitration), the seminar will not deal heavily with arbitration in the courts or with the judicial role in enforcing arbitration agreements or entertaining challenges to awards. Rather, the focus of the seminar is on the conduct of all major aspects of international arbitration itself, mostly in the sequence in which they arise in practice.

Thus, the seminar proceeds through a series of major phases of an international arbitration in sequence, dealing with: drafting the arbitration agreement; arbitrator disclosures and challenges; anti-suit and anti-arbitration injunctions; threshold issues in arbitration (the preliminary hearing, conditions precedent, applicable law, confidentiality); multi-party and class arbitration; arbitrating with States and state entities; third-party funding; interim relief; discovery; conduct of the hearing (witness testimony, use of experts); arbitrator deliberations and the award; post-award relief (correction, modification, supplementation).

In preparation for each week's session, students will read a combination of (a) academic and professional literature and (b) instruments and documents from practice.

At the initial seminar session, students will be asked to select a topic from a list proposed by the instructors. Although there may be more than one student assigned to a given each topic, each student will prepare and submit his or her seminar paper on the topic independently.

During the majority of the seminar sessions, students will participate actively in simulations on matters that are the subject of that week's materials, based on hypotheticals provided by the instructors.

Student evaluation will be based on (1) seminar participation, (2) simulation performance, and (3) the seminar paper.

It is desirable for students in the seminar to have had some prior exposure to international arbitration. Participation in the fall term course in International Commercial Arbitration and International Investment Law and Arbitration certainly qualifies, but so too does previous classroom study of the subject, whether in the U.S. or in another jurisdiction, or significant exposure in practice.

Instructors will select students from waitlist.