Handbook Vienna Rules: A Practitioner's Guide

Abstract

Handbook Vienna Rules: A Practitioner’s Guide , VIAC, 2014. This article reviews the Handbook Vienna Rules: a Practitioner's Guide (VIAC 2014) . After a brief overview of the evolving landscape of international arbitration and the role of arbitral institutions, the article discusses the Handbook and the main features of the 2013 Vienna Arbitration Rules. Written by a group of the most distinguished Viennese and German arbitration practitioners, the Handbook offers a comprehensive analysis and commentary whose primary audience is arbitration practitioners who are involved in an arbitration under the Vienna Rules or simply want to remain updated on the new features of the 2013 Vienna Rules. To this audience, the Handbook provides a clear, helpful and indeed essential guide. International arbitration has been constantly changing, indeed evolving, in more than one ways. It has become specialized, with the fields of investment, construction, maritime, and, growingly, energy and financial arbitration becoming distinct areas of arbitration practice. It has also become more complex and multipolar, where a single dispute is often submitted to different dispute resolution fora, including commercial tribunal, investment tribunal and national courts. In two well-discussed cases, namely the Yukos case and the Lago Agrio case (albeit admittedly not the typical arbitration disputes), parts of the dispute were submitted to commercial arbitration, investment arbitration, state-to-state arbitration, the national courts of a wide range of jurisdictions, even the European Court of Human Rights. The progressing evolution of international arbitration has even pushed national courts to become more efficient and more competitive, with developments at a regional level (see the new Brussels I Recast) or at a national level (see the new Singapore International Commercial Court). Against this exciting but highly competitive background, arbitration institutions have been working hard to respond to the new challenges that the latest developments in international arbitration have brought about and adapt to the increasingly more …