Seminars

Workshop on December 18^th 2009
Séminaire du 18 décembre 2009
(Paris)

Sciences Po Paris
Auditorium François Goguel, 56, Rue des Saints-Pères, 75007 Paris, FRANCE

Presentation of the Workshop

The Steering Committee of the Network « Public Contracts in Legal Globalization » decided to devote its annual meeting to the subject of Public Contracts and International Arbitration. In addition to being studied as one of the phenomena of globalization that affects public contracts, this issue implies significant practical consequences and provides essential theoretical challenges.

From the practical point-of-view, it is important to highlight that an important amount of international arbitration cases focuses on public contracts. Given that public entities are essential actors of the international trade, they conclude public contracts, which are very often submitted to arbitration in case of litigation.

From the theoretical approach, the compliance of public contracts to the international arbitration does influence the domestic legal regimes. In support of the resort to this particular way of dispute resolution, the implicated contracts elude not only the jurisdictional but also the legal system of the public contracting parties’ domestic law.

The goal of this meeting is then to present and analyze the several ways to resort to international arbitration on the matter of public contracts. The perspective of the arbitration institutions, such as International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), will be taken into account. The confrontation of public contracts to the regional systems of arbitration in Africa and Latin America will likewise be contemplated. Finally, exploring the perspectives of the national systems (France, Belgium, Canada, Russia, China…) will allow us to build a full picture of the subject at the end of the workshop.