As the Middle East grows as a hub for dispute resolution, the role of Sharia law in the legal affairs of the region is becoming an increasing cause for concern. Paul Turner, head of arbitration at Al Tamimi & Co in Dubai, and Robert Karrar-Lewsley, a senior associate at the same firm, consider its impact on arbitration and whether it gives rise to public policy defences to enforcement under the New York Convention

Ralph Alexander Lorz, professor at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, tries to reconcile the conflicting positions on EU investment protection standards recently taken by the European Commission and the Parliament

Doug Jones, peripatetic president of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and a partner at Clayton Utz in Sydney, reports on another busy month in the job.

Peter Prows, associate at Briscoe Ivester & Bazel LLP in San Francisco, reports on Mauritius’s pending arbitration against the UK over the Chagos archipelago under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Ahead of this week's conference in Geneva to mark the 50th anniversary of ICCA, GAR re-runs an article published last June on changes to the council's leadership and how it is reaching out to new demographics.

CIArb president Doug Jones shares his experiences at this year’s Vis moots and says that the Inter-Pacific Bar Association Conference in Kyoto was a success despite the withdrawal of some overseas lawyers after the recent disasters in Japan.

As Indonesia’s economy grows, increasingly confident and nationalistic businesses and regulators are insisting on dispute resolution inside the country. Nicholas Peacock, a partner at Herbert Smith in Singapore, asks whether arbitration in Indonesia is able to meet the needs of international investors.

On 25 March students at Columbia Law School organised a conference dealing with the challenges arising from complex arbitrations and parallel proceedings. Event co-chairs Edith Aupetit and Ignacio Zapiola, both LLM students at Columbia, report.

Patrick Heneghan and Jonathon Egerton-Peters, both of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, ask whether the different conclusions of the UK Supreme Court and the Paris Court of Appeal in Dallah v Pakistan represent a UK-French stand-off or simply a difference of opinion?