The International Effectiveness of the Annulment of an Arbitral Award

Book excerpt: In international arbitration as practiced today, few issues are as controversial and hotly debated as the foreign enforcement of an arbitral award that has been annulled in its originating jurisdiction. As more and more jurisdictions challenge such annulments, the issue has inevitably attracted the intense scrutiny of practitioners and scholars. Now, in the first book written on the subject--and a major work unlikely to be superseded for quite some time--the international practitioner and scholar Dr. Hamid G. Gharavi provides a keen, in-depth analysis of the sources, legal and practical grounds, and possible solutions of the problem, particularly as it affects international business transactions in the global economy. Dr Gharavi analyzes the relevant provisions in all major international arbitration conventions, as well as national laws on the annulment and enforcement of arbitral awards in force in more than fifty different countries. Among the book's most notable features are the following: invaluable information on, and an in-depth analysis of, the travaux pr?paratoires of the New York Convention pertaining to the articulation of annulment/enforcement controls; the effects of the cultural, judicial, and legal diversity of states; and clear elucidation of the interests that often separate North from South in the practice of arbitration. With detailed attention to theoretical and practical perspectives--especially as they reveal the dangers to which the enforcement of annulled awards can subject international business operators-- Dr Gharavi arrives, after consideration of all interests, at a global resolution aiming to establish an effective and harmonious international legal framework for the control of awards in accordance with the nature and mission of arbitration.