Are CIArb’s new rules & guidelines innovative or more of the same, asks Tim Hardy
In the past five years, many arbitral institutions have revised their arbitration rules to introduce provisions for emergency arbitrators and include measures for improving efficiency. Consistent with this trend, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) recently published the 2015 edition of its arbitration rules. The new rules pick up on both of those themes but also include additional arrangements for CIArb to take on the role of appointing authority.
New arbitration rules
This is a new departure from the previous role of the institute and involves not only the appointment of arbitrators in the event of parties failing to reach an agreement, but also resolving challenges to arbitrators on the grounds of lack of independence or impartiality. For the first time in its history, CIArb has established a specialised panel to decide on such challenges.
Some commentators have described CIArb as offering “admin lite” services since it manages so little of the arbitral proceedings. The main advantage of this “admin lite” concept is that there is a modest fixed fee for
