The Right of Representation in a Foreign Venue

Abstract

‘WITH exceedingly insignificant exceptions … the whole world has accepted the right for parties in international arbitrations to be represented by advocates without subjecting them to any formal or material requirements as to their competence … In legal systems permeated by the monopoly of lawyers, this is nothing but a quiet revolution1.’ Ideally, international arbitration is a moveable feast which provides the same nourishment wherever the table is set. Accordingly, much has been written about the trend toward internationalisation of legal norms applied by arbitrators2 and, indeed, of awards themselves.3 This theoretical evolution has been accompanied by similar developments in practice, in particular the removal of idiosyncratic traps for the unwary contained in provisions of national laws affecting international arbitrations,4 and the increased acceptance of arbitration by parties outside the traditional mainstream of commerce.5 There is, however, a more prosaic development supportive of these trends which has not received the attention it perhaps requires. That is the internationalisation of the corps of advocates who represent parties in arbitration. This corps of arbitration experts is internationalised, at least in part because of the general lack of national obstacles to their participation as advocates in arbitration proceedings, wherever they occur. The members of such a corps have, as one commentator noted ‘shared values and viewpoints, which in turn promotes the growth of a new unitary international law of arbitration.’6 Yet one should not be entirely sanguine about an internationally-accepted unobstructed right to be represented by such advocates. A poignant illustration of the proposition that all may not be well is that of ‘ In the matter of an Arbitration between Builders Federal (Hong Kong) Limited and Joseph Gartner & Co, and Turner (East Asia) Pte Ltd (No. 90 of 1987)7 (“the Turner Case”), in …