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Professor Rogers addresses ethics in international arbitration in several fora around the world

Penn State Law professor Catherine Rogers addressed an audience at The World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C., at the 32nd Joint Colloquium on International Arbitration.
The World Bank

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Professor Catherine A. Rogers, the Paul and Marjorie Price Faculty Scholar​ at Penn State Law and leading expert on ethics in international arbitration, has addressed audiences around the world on critical issues regarding the ethics of international arbitrators, counsel and third-party funders. These presentations draw largely from her book, Ethics in International Arbitration, which is the first monograph to systematically analyze the existing ambiguities and conflicting ethic rules that apply in international arbitration.

Most recently, Rogers addressed an audience at The World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C., at the 32nd Joint Colloquium on International Arbitration, a program co-sponsored by the ICC International Court of Arbitration, the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The program was opened by Meg Kinnear, secretary-general of ICSID, Alexis Mourre, president of the ICC International Court of Arbitration, and India Johnson, president and CEO, American Arbitration Association’s International Center for Dispute Resolution (AAA-ICDR).

In the first panel of the colloquium, Rogers was part of a panel discussion on “Conflicts of Interest and Codes of Conduct,” which also included leading partners at international arbitration firms. The panel addressed how many of the challenges currently facing international arbitration focus on the ethical conduct of various actors, most notably counsel and arbitrators. Panelists debated the efficacy of a wave of new reforms that have been proposed or implemented by various arbitration institutions and organizations around the globe.

In November, at an event in London organized by the International Bar Association (IBA), Rogers addressed the hotly contested issue of arbitrator conflicts of interest that arise when third-party funders participate in international arbitration cases. Although speaking in her individual capacity at the IBA event, Rogers, together with her co-chairs Professor Stavros Brekoulakis, Queen Mary, and William “Rusty” Park, former president of the London Court of International Arbitration, had convened the day before the IBA event a meeting of their global ICCA-Queen Mary Task Force on Third Party Funding. The Task Force is addressing what reforms and guidance are needed on various ethical issues relating to third-party funding, including potential conflicts with arbitrators and will be publishing those results in 2016.

Earlier in November, Rogers addressed issues of arbitrator ethics at a conference in Xi’an, China, at an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ICSID. The conference, “The Evolution of International Investment Treaties and Dispute Resolution,” was hosted by the ICSID and Xi’an Jiaotong University. At the Xi’an conference, Rogers spoke on the closing panel, which sought to identify future reforms to address critiques regarding the legitimacy of investment arbitration.

“Because many of the current criticisms of international arbitration—and particularly investment arbitration—focus on the ethical conduct of counsel and arbitrators, it is not surprising that these issues are now of central importance on a global scale,” said Rogers. “As a multicultural and highly decentralized transnational system, the development of meaningful ethical regulation faces enormous challenges, but those challenges are increasingly being addressed with innovative responses that are transforming the system.”

In addition to her position at Penn State Law, Rogers also serves as professor of ethics, regulation & the rule of law and director of the Institute for Ethics, Regulation & the Rule of Law at Queen Mary University of London. She is a reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law, the U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration, and is frequent speaker at major international arbitration conferences. Rogers is the founder of Arbitrator Intelligence, an NGO that aims to increase fairness, transparency and accountability in the arbitrator selection process, and increased diversity in arbitrator appointments.

Contacts:

Wyatt Dubois
wed112@psu.edu
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