A Study of the Nature of Arbitration Panel (Article 30 of Iran's Law on Implementation of General Policies of Principle 44) with Attention to the Judicial Precedent

Under the third chapter of Iran's Third Five-year Development Plan, titled as "Ceding the Shares and Management of Governmental Companies", an arbitration panel is established for settling the disputes arising out of ceding processes. This panel was further validated in the article 30 of the Law on Implementation of General Policies of Principle 44. However, a question might arise that whether the established panel is indeed arbitration in the real sense, or it is a mere similarity in title. In order to answer this question, two different approaches are considered in this study. In the first approach, some fundamental essences of arbitration are selected; then the arbitration panel of the Third Development Plan is examined in each and all essences to see whether it fulfills the requirements of arbitration. In the second approach, Iran's judicial precedent with regard to this arbitration panel is studied to see whether, under Iranian judicial system, this panel is considered as arbitration or not. While both approaches demonstrate some inconsistencies and ambiguities in the legal nature of so-called Arbitration Panel, they both concur that this is not arbitration in the real sense