Strange Bedfellows: Remarks on the Compatibility of Commercial Arbitration Principles with Maritime Arbitration

Transnational Dispute Management, Vol. 18, Issue 1, January 2021

23 Pages Posted: 2 Nov 2021

See all articles by aonghus cheevers

aonghus cheevers

Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin (deceased)

Paolo Vargiu

Leicester Law School, University of Leicester

Tony Cole

University of Leicester Law School

Date Written: September 7, 2021

Abstract

This Article examines one particular element of maritime arbitration and its variation from mainstream international commercial arbitration, namely the standards of independence and impartiality that are applied to arbitrators. Building upon the analysis of the English courts in the three decisions in the dispute between the Halliburton Company and Chubb Bermuda Insurance Ltd., it incorporates information from interviews undertaken with maritime arbitration practitioners in several European jurisdictions. Part one introduces the historical foundations of maritime law and maritime arbitration, illustrating how this history reflected and laid further foundation for the separation of maritime disputes from other commercial disputes. Part two maintains this historical focus, but turns specifically to maritime law and maritime arbitration in England, addressing how it came to have the separate and distinct status within English legal practice that it now possesses. Part three examines the English court decisions in the dispute between Halliburton and Chubb, and the development those decisions reflect from an initially relatively straightforward treatment of all forms of arbitration as raising similar issues of impartiality and independence, to an ultimate position that emphasised instead the centrality of contextual considerations when determining the impartiality and independence standards to which arbitrators should be held. In the final section, the question of maritime arbitration’s genuine distinctiveness with respect to impartiality and independence is considered through an analysis of interviews with maritime arbitration practitioners.

Keywords: Arbitration, Maritime

Suggested Citation

cheevers, aonghus and Vargiu, Paolo and Cole, Tony, Strange Bedfellows: Remarks on the Compatibility of Commercial Arbitration Principles with Maritime Arbitration (September 7, 2021). Transnational Dispute Management, Vol. 18, Issue 1, January 2021, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3918824

Aonghus Cheevers

Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin (deceased)

Ireland

Paolo Vargiu

Leicester Law School, University of Leicester ( email )

University Road
Leicester, LE1 7RH
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://le.ac.uk/people/paolo-vargiu

Tony Cole (Contact Author)

University of Leicester Law School ( email )

University Road
Leicester LE1 7RH, LE1 7RH
United Kingdom

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