Post award arbitral tribunal's mandate under the UNCITRAL Model Law and national laws based thereon

Abstract

The UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration provides for the extension of the mandate of the arbitral tribunal post issuance of the final award for the issuance of correction, interpretation, additional award, and remittance of the award back to the arbitral tribunal to remove grounds for challenging the award. Using a doctrinal approach, this paper examines the deviations of the national laws of adopting jurisdictions from the Model Law in regards to this extended mandate, and evaluates the improvements and drawbacks in these deviations. Mainly, the findings of this paper are that, of the many deviations, the positive changes are those that provide comfortable and lenient default provisions for the benefit of inexperienced parties, and since correction, interpretation, additional award, and remittance are useful provisions that are designed to help self-rectify the arbitral process, without adversely delaying it, then the changes that increase the efficacy of these provisions are welcomed. On the other hand, unnecessary deviations are seen as drawbacks that hinder the harmonization of national arbitration laws aimed at by the Model Law. The adopting jurisdictions shall be limited to those acknowledged as such by the UNCITRAL.