This is the first of a series of four blog postings written by Nadja Alexander , Michael Leathes , Tina Monberg and Irena Vanenkova. Achieving the promise of mediation in conflicts that threaten the stability of societies and economies is one of the most important challenges of our time. Inspiring progress has been made in…

Faithful readers will recall my posts here and here mentioning the failed mediation relating to the international effort to reach an agreement on the distribution of some $9 Billion in assets remaining from the Nortel insolvency. The Ontario Courts are now struggling with the fallout from that failed mediation. This week saw the release of…

Mackerel has recently been taken off the ‘Fish to Eat’ list of the Marine Conservation Society (MCS). Due to overfishing, MCS has downgraded its rating of this popular oily fish. The society believes that international arguments about mackerel quotas mean it is no longer a sustainable choice. MCS advises that mackerel should now only be…

Prior to Christmas I found myself in Jerusalem, Israel – the heart of the heart of the conflict of our time. Here, no one agrees on anything – even the monks from various Christian denominations (Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Catholics and others) responsible for The Church of the Holy Sepulchre where Christ was crucified, argue amongst…

(Foreign) investor – (host) State disputes are for many reasons an intriguing and fast developing part of legal and dispute resolution practice. Since the late 1990s, the number of such disputes has increased sharply: In 1997, 19 known cases were brought against states. By 2007, there were over 250 known cases, and more than 450…

While the world becomes ever faster-paced, litigating business disputes are unchangeably slow. The recently published World Bank’s “Doing Business 2012: Doing Business in a More Transparent World” report shows that state court procedures in most countries remain lengthy, costly and complicated. Although this is not good news for anyone, as a side effect, the flaws…