In the United Kingdom, third-party litigation funding is currently getting some attention in the legal press: The industry has agreed on a Code of Conduct, which was published by the Civil Justice Council in late November 2011. US litigation funders appear to have an eye on the European market – using the word European in the European sense, i.e. including the UK. What does the German market for litigation funding look like? Read More
Month: December 2011
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
Weekend pursuits. Browsing through piles of books, I come across As Far As I Can Remember, the autobiography of Sir Michael Kerr, the English judge – and there is a little story that goes with it.
As a summer student in a firm in London, I had attended a hearing in the Court of Appeal. After the hearing, the barrister told me that I most likely knew one of the judges, Sir Michael Kerr – not in person, but from one of my children’s books, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. And he was right. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, by Judith Kerr, Sir Michael’s sister, is the autobiographical story of the Kerr family’s emigration from Nazi Germany to Switzerland, France and eventually England. Their father, Alfred Kerr, war a famous journalist and writer, and amongst those whose books were burnt in May 1933. Read More
Transparency in Investment Treaty Arbitration
Legal Tribune Online (LTO) interviewed, in an article a couple of days ago, Moritz Renner of Humboldt University,Berlin, on the subject of transparency in investor treaty arbitration.
The main theme of LTO’s article is the lack of transparency of arbitration proceedings. Moritz Renner argues that the lack of transparency jeopardizes or even violates public interest. More precisely, he criticizes that there is no way to find out whether the arbitrators did take public interest into account when rendering the award. What he would like to see are procedural safeguards that make sure that public interest and public policy arguments are being heard. Read More
Law in the Making: Update on the German Mediation Act
This is an update to my earlier post on the progress made on the Mediation Act, which I had characterized as “much ado about nothing”. The draft version of the Mediation Act on which the all-party consensus in the Legal Committee (Rechtsausschuss) of the Bundestag is based is not yet available online; you can find it here.
Jürgen Klowait, one of the Co-Founders of the Round Table Mediation & Conflict Management of the German Economy did not agree with my assessment and has kindly shared his comments on the changes: