OUVRAGE : L.E. Salles, Forum Shopping in International Adjudication: The Role of Preliminary Objections

Luiz Eduardo SALLES

Forum shopping, which consists of strategic forum selection, parallel litigation and serial litigation, is a phenomenon of growing importance in international adjudication. Preliminary objections (or a party's placement of conditions on the existence and development of the adjudicatory process) have been traditionally conceived as barriers to adjudication before single forums. This book discusses how adjudicators and parties may refer to questions of jurisdiction and admissibility in order to avoid conflicting decisions on overlapping cases, excessive exercises of jurisdiction and the proliferation of litigation. It highlights an emerging, overlooked function of preliminary objections: transmission belts of procedure-regulating rules across the 'international judiciary'. Activating this often dormant, managerial function of preliminary objections would nurture coordination of otherwise independent and autonomous tribunals.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

1. The rise of 'forum shopping' in international adjudication

2. The promise and limits of 'proceduralism' to address forum shopping

3. On preliminary questions and objections

4. The source and contours of international tribunals' powers to rule on preliminary objections

5. Jurisdiction and admissibility

6. International tribunals' discretion to (not) exercise jurisdiction and forum shopping

7. Principles and rules permitting coordination through the prism of preliminary objections

8. Conclusion.

Luiz Eduardo SALLES, Forum Shopping in International Adjudication: The Role of Preliminary Objections, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014 (370 pp.)

Luiz Eduardo Salles is an attorney at law at Barretto Ferreira e Brancher (BKBG), São Paulo, where he practices international trade and competition law. He holds a PhD in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, and he is also a lecturer in international law at the University of São Caetano do Sul, Brazil.