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Dr Paul Macmahon

This course is available on the Executive Master of Laws (ELLM). This course is not available as an outside option.

Available to Executive LLM students only. This course will be offered on the Executive LLM during the four year degree period. The Law School will not offer all Executive LLM courses every year, although some of the more popular courses may be offered in each year, or more than once each year. Please note that whilst it is the Law School's intention to offer all Executive LLM courses, its ability to do so will depend on the availability of the staff member in question. For more information please refer to the Law School website. 

Arbitration — binding adjudication outside the courts deriving its authority from party consent — is a standard form of dispute resolution for international commercial disputes. Supporters of arbitration cite its neutrality, its confidentiality, its flexibility, the greater expertise of arbitrators, and the global enforceability of arbitral awards. To detractors, however, international arbitration is often expensive and slow; other critics contend, more fundamentally, that arbitration infringes the spheres appropriately occupied by national courts and national law. Regardless, the complex relationship between arbitrators and courts, especially when combined with transnational elements, raises a host of fascinating theoretical and practical problems.

London is one of the world’s main centres for international commercial arbitration and, accordingly, this course focuses on English arbitration law. English law, however, is consistently placed in comparative perspective, especially with UNCITRAL’s Model Law and with the laws of some of London’s most significant competitors: France, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States. Coverage includes:

• Forms of international commercial arbitration

• Validity and interpretation of arbitration agreements 

• Challenges to arbitral jurisdiction

• Appointment of arbitrators 

• Arbitral procedure

• The role of courts in assisting arbitral proceedings 

• Law applicable to the merits of the dispute

• Challenges to arbitral awards       

• Recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards

• Public policy limitations on international commercial arbitration

This course concentrates on arbitration resulting from agreements between private parties and may particularly appeal to students with interests in contracts and private international law.

24-26 hours of contact time.

Students will have the option of producing a formative exam question of 2000 words to be delivered one month from the end of the module’s teaching session by email.

Nigel Blackaby & Constantine Partasides, Redfern and Hunter on International Commercial Arbitration (6th edn, OUP 2015);  Margaret Moses, The Principles and Practice of International Commercial Arbitration (3rd edn, CUP 2017);  Gary Born, International Arbitration: Law and Practice (3rd edn, Kluwer 2015);  Emmanuel Gaillard & John Savage, Fouchard Gaillard Goldman on International Commercial Arbitration(1999); George Bermann, ‘The “Gateway” Problem in International Commercial Arbitration' (2012) 37 Yale Journal of International Law 1; Jan Kleinheisterkamp, 'Overriding Mandatory Laws in International Arbitration' (2018) 67 ICLQ 903-930

Assessment path 1
Essay (100%, 8000 words).

Assessment path 2
Take-home assessment (100%).