On 23 April, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP and Kluwer Law International, part of Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, hosted a panel discussion on the recent US Supreme Court decision in BG Group v. Republic of Argentina.
The full recording of the discussion, Dr. Maxi Scherer’s accompanying PowerPoint presentation, and a written report of the event are now available.
Professor David Caron (Dean of the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London) chaired the discussion between panel members Johnny Veeder QC (Essex Court Chambers) and Dr. Maxi Scherer (Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP and Queen Mary, University of London). Gary Born, chair of the International Arbitration Group at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, provided commentary on the panelists’ viewpoints.
Approximately 300 participants joined the event in person or online through a live web stream. The panelists discussed whether the US Supreme Court was correct in applying an ordinary contract analysis to the dispute resolution provision contained in a bilateral investment treaty. Following up on questions from the audience, the participants also analyzed the reasons why the majority opinion contained few, if any, references to public international law. Although the participants disagreed as to whether the US Supreme Court’s legal rationale was correct, they shared the conclusion that the decision will influence international arbitration, both commercial and investment, in the United States and beyond for years to come.
The event also marked the publication of the second edition of Gary Born’s International Commercial Arbitration, an authoritative three-volume, 4,000-page work, providing the most comprehensive available commentary on all aspects of the international commercial arbitration process.
