International Construction Law Review
BOOK REVIEW
HUMPHREY LLOYD
The Secretariat’s Guide to ICC Arbitration. By Jason Fry, Simon Greenberg and Francesca Mazza, with the assistance of Benjamin Moss. Paris: ICC Publication No 729E, 2012. ISBN 978–92–842–0136–5. 502 pp incl. 2 Indexes. €119.00
The latest edition of the ICC Rules of Arbitration came into force just over a year ago. They apply to all arbitrations commenced after 1 January 2012 (but not, unless otherwise agreed, to those commenced earlier). Not surprisingly, there are now numerous commentaries on the new Rules. This Guide, however, is written by the then Secretary-General of the ICC International Court of Arbitration, Jason Fry, the former Deputy Secretary-General, Simon Greenberg, and Francesca Mazza, the Secretary of the ICC Commission on Arbitration who also acted as Secretary to the Taskforce responsible for the revision and drafting of the new Rules. (The decision to revise the 1998 Rules was taken by the ICC Commission on Arbitration in October 2008.) There is a Foreword by John Beechey, the President of the ICC International Court of Arbitration, and a Preface by Peter Wolrich, Chairman of the ICC Commission on Arbitration and the Chairman of the Taskforce, on the revision of the Rules. He was assisted by Michael Bühler and Laurie Craig, as Co-Chairs of that Taskforce. Others from the ICC Court of Arbitration have been involved in the writing of the book, notably Benjamin Moss, Deputy Counsel at the Secretariat of the Court.
This Guide is, therefore, to be treated as the most authoritative commentary available on the new ICC Rules of Arbitration although, quite correctly, there is, in paragraph 18, a formal and necessary reservation that whatever is contained in the book does not and cannot bind the ICC Court or a Secretariat, not least because there will be changes in practice, including the reconsideration of existing practices in the light of experience. Furthermore, as with any new Rules, a commentary can only give guidance based upon past practice under the old Rules.
The work has a logical order. It goes through all the Rules from Article 1 to Article 411 sequentially, some 400 pages later. There are then useful chapters on other ICC Dispute Arbitration Services (Chapter 4), ICC Dispute Resolution clauses (Chapter 5) and a comparative table of the 1998/2012 Rules (Chapter 6). Finally, in Chapter 7, the Rules are reprinted in full. However, in the main text (Chapter 3), each Article under discussion is set out in full at the beginning of the commentary. Furthermore, within the commentary on every Article, very helpful “Notes to Parties” are provided in boxes which stand out and remind the reader and user of
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