The Center for American and International Law Institute for Transnational Arbitration (CAIL ITA) Presents Ethics in International Arbitration Series: Disclosure Obligations by Arbitrators: How Narrow or Broad They Should Be?

Disclosure obligations are not universal and typically vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. This can be especially problematic when a tribunal is made up of arbitrators from different jurisdictions (which is the norm in international arbitration) and with different disclosure rules applying to them. The most universal soft law is the IBA Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration (the current version approved in 2024; the “Guidelines”), which is regarded as the “bible” on disclosure.

The webinar will be led by Catherine Rogers, Research Professor and Affiliated Scholar, University of California, College of the Law (San Francisco, CA, USA) and Full Professor of Law Università Bocconi (Italy), and Gábor Damjanovic, former Chair of the IBA’s Professional Ethics Committee, Managing Partner at Forgó, Damjanovic & Partners Law Firm (Budapest, Hungary) and practicing arbitrator. In addition to facilitating an interactive discussion, Professor Rogers and Dr. Damjanovic will also engage the audience to discuss

1. why the general principles have a supremacy over the traffic light system in the Guidelines and is that a right approach;
2. what to do (if anything) if members of a tribunal have (very) different disclosure obligations applicable to them or understand so resulting in an uneven playing field;
3. what (if anything) a co-arbitrator should do if he/she establishes that his/her co-arbitrator should have made a disclosure but omitted to do so and whether the answer is different if (a) the non-disclosing arbitrator is the chair of the tribunal; or (b) there may be a fear that the award may be set aside due to such non-disclosure; and
4. whether and what institutions should do when discovering scenarios under (iii).