The American Influence on International Commercial Arbitration

Pedro J. Martinez-Fraga is a Partner in Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, LLP's International Arbitration and Litigation Practice Group, where he is the firm's co-leader of the International Arbitration Practice Group globally. On 16 December, 2015, President Barack Obama appointed Martinez-Fraga to the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (World Bank). Martínez-Fraga has represented eight countries as lead counsel, and has served as an arbitrator in ICSID (World Bank) proceedings. He has published more than sixty articles or chapters in fifteen countries, which have been published in five languages, and has written six books on public or private international law.

Introduction; 1. The formation and transformation of the status of international and domestic arbitration in the United States; 2. Wilko v. Swan, Scherk v. Alberto-Culver, and Mitsubishi v. Soler: Crafting a level playing field; 3. Arbitrator immunity; 4. Procedural change and 28 USC § 1782: the taking of evidence v. common law discovery; 5. The new unorthodox conception of common law transparency in international arbitration through evidence gathering and orality; 6. 28 USC § 1782 and manifest disregard of the law: is avoiding one walking into the other?; 7. Perjury and arbitration: the honor system where the arbitrators have the honor and the parties have the system; 8. Developments in the apportionment of jurisdiction between arbitrators and courts concerning the validity of a contract containing an arbitration clause, and transformations regarding the severability doctrine; 9. US arbitration law and its dialogue with the New York Convention: the development of four issues; Conclusion; Appendices; Index.