ABSTRACT
Arbitration laws impose time limits within which any application for annulment or recognition/enforcement of an award must be brought. One of the most common things said about arbitration is that there is no appeal to an arbitral award. In reality, while the possibility of challenging an arbitral award is, and has to be, challenging an arbitral award is possible. The New York Convention applies not only to “foreign” awards, but also to “arbitral awards not considered as domestic in the State where their recognition and enforcement are sought”. Despite the unquestionable focus of the New York Convention on encouraging enforcement of arbitration awards, there are nonetheless formal requirements that must be met for recognition or enforcement under the Convention to be possible. The need for the arbitration agreement may be less intuitively obvious, as the party requesting enforcement may think that since they had the arbitration, and arbitration requires agreement, it must be self-evident that there was an arbitration agreement.
