'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

'[B]oth decisions focus on the applicable standard for challenges to arbitrators, and specifically on whether an "appearance of bias" standard is required. In both cases, the Tribunals, after a fairly detailed analysis of the parties' submissions and prior ICSID and other international decisions, clearly rejected the requirement of an "appearance of bias" standard, instead opting for a less stringent standard. Once the "appearance of bias" standard was disregarded, however, the contours of the applicable standard adopted remain unclear.'

 -- IntLawGrrls contributor Chiara Giorgetti (left), who's just joined the law faculty at Virginia's University of Richmond, in an ASIL Insight that reviews 2 decisions in which a party's challenge to a member of an arbitral panel was rejected (by the panel's remaining members, a fact that, Chiara notes, "may create uneasy situations for arbitrators and may need to be re-examined"). The 1st decision, issued last November in a dispute between Mauritius and Britain, concerned Sir Christopher Greenwood, a judge on the International Court of Justice; the 2d decision, issued in February this dispute between Venezuela and ConocoPhillips Co., before ICSID, the International Centre for Settlment of Investment Disputes, appears to have been taken offline. It concerned Canadian lawyer-arbitrator-diplomat L. Yves Fortier.