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Inter-American Convention on International Commercial Arbitration
The Inter-American Convention on International Commercial Arbitration, signed in Panama on 30 January 1975, is one of the main arbitral conventions for the American continent. As for the others, these are the New York Convention of 12 June 1958 on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards and the Inter-American Convention on Extraterritorial Validity of Foreign Judgements and Arbitral Awards, signed in Montevideo on 8 May 1979.
The Panama Convention lays down the principle of validity of the arbitration agreement. Any such arbitration agreement must be in writing.
As regards the constitution of the arbitral tribunal, the Convention specifies that national or foreign arbitrators may be appointed, by the parties themselves or by a third party. The third party may be either a person or a juridical institution.
The parties themselves can establish the procedural rules of the arbitration by agreement. In the absence of agreement, the rules of procedure of the Inter-American Commercial Arbitration Commission should be followed.
According to the Convention the arbitral award has the force of a final judicial judgement.
Finally, the Convention provides for a limited number of grounds for the refusal of recognition and execution of foreign arbitral awards, taken directly from Article V of the New York Convention. These grounds are as follows: legal incapacity of one of the parties to the arbitration agreement; procedural fairness and due process were not followed by the arbitral tribunal; the tribunal based its decision on a dispute not envisaged by the agreement of the parties; the arbitral tribunal was not constituted in accordance with the agreement of the parties, or it followed a procedure which was contrary to their agreement; the award has not yet become binding upon the parties.
The Convention mentions two other exclusions which can be considered ex officio by the judicial authority requested to recognize or enforce the decision: under the law of the State, the subject of the dispute can not be settled by arbitration, or; the decision goes against the public policy of the State where it is expected to be recognized or enforced.
