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Professor Rogers helps organize international arbitration conference in Palestine

An international arbitration conference held recently in Ramallah, Palestine, was co-sponsored by Penn State Law and organized in part by Professor Catherine Rogers.
Panel at Ramallah conference

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Over 100 local attorneys, law professors, arbitrators, judges, and government officials gathered recently in Ramallah, Palestine, together with international experts for the Third Annual Palestine International Arbitration Conference, which was co-sponsored by the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (German Agency for International Cooperation) and the Palestine International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). Penn State has also been a co-sponsor of all three annual conferences, and Penn State Law professor Catherine Rogers has assisted in organizing them. 

According to Rogers, this year’s event was particularly important in light of a new draft Palestinian arbitration law and the fact that Palestine has recently become a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (also known as the New York Convention), which is the treaty that ensures enforcement of international arbitral awards and provides the basic legal framework for international arbitration.

The ICC Palestine’s International Arbitration Commission’s initiative, headed by attorney Lubna Katbeh, to draft Palestinian Arbitration Law was the centerpiece of the conference. The new draft law aims at bringing Palestinian law more in line with prevailing international standards. Rogers, working together with Gary Born and Michael Howe from Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale & Dorr, provided comments and feedback on the draft legislation. Penn State Law S.J.D. student Rami Alhellu, also working with lawyers from the Wilmer law firm, worked to aid in sophisticated translation issues relating to the new draft law.  And Alhellu and fellow S.J.D. student Saleh Abbadi, aided in the preparation of Arabic versions of materials for the conference.

The new draft is based on the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law’s (UNCITRAL) Model Law. For this reason, the secretary general of UNCITRAL, Renaud Sorieul, provided comments from UNCITRAL’s perspective and participated in the conference. Debate at the conference was lively among various stakeholders, but support for improving arbitration in Palestine was a common goal among all commentators and participants.

“This year Palestine has continued its commitment to promote and develop competences in international arbitration, from signing the New York Convention, to a new law, to continued training for arbitrators and attorneys. These efforts are all part of a more general commitment to developing a local ‘culture of arbitration,’” Rogers says. “This commitment bodes well both for Palestinians and all parties who may find themselves arbitrating in Palestine or with Palestinian parties, particularly under the auspices of the Jerusalem Arbitration Centre.”

Rogers is one of ICC Palestine’s delegated members of the Court of Arbitration for the Jerusalem Arbitration Centre, which was created to resolve commercial disputes between Palestinian and Israeli parties.

“In the last four years, there has been remarkable change in Palestine’s arbitration culture that is greater than what we have witnessed in the preceding 15 years,” says Katbeh. “The amount and kind of exposure to international arbitration is remarkable. The availability of training and conferences has benefited a huge number of stakeholders from different sectors.”

In conjunction with the Palestine conference, international arbitration experts including Born and Chris Drahozal, professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, also conducted a practice session with the Palestinian Vis Moot team from Birzeit University. The Willem C. Vis competition in Vienna, Austria, is a renowned and popular annual mock international arbitration competition, which draws roughly 300 teams and around 1,200 student advocates from law schools around the globe. This is only the second year that Palestine has sent a team.

About Catherine A. Rogers
Catherine A. Rogers is a professor of law at Penn State Law, and a professor of ethics, regulation, and the rule of law at Queen Mary, University of London, where she is also co-director of the Institute on Ethics & Regulation. Her scholarship focuses on the convergence of the public and private in international adjudication, and on the reconceptualization of the attorney as a global actor. Among other appointments, Rogers is a reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the U.S. Law (Third) of International Commercial Arbitration, one of the ICC Palestine’s delegated members of the Court of Arbitration for the Jerusalem Arbitration Center, and co-chair, together with William W. “Rusty” Park and Stavros Brekoulakis, of the ICCA-Queen Mary Task Force on Third-Party Funding in International Arbitration. She is the president and founder of Arbitrator Intelligence, a nonprofit entity aiming to increase transparency, fairness, and accountability in the arbitrator selection process. 

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