Revision in International Arbitration: Practice of Iran-United States Claims Tribunal

One of the main challenges facing international arbitration is the issue of reopening and revising the final and binding awards and decisions of an arbitral tribunal, especially when the procedural law and the arbitration agreement are silent regarding this issue. Some international arbitral tribunals conclude that they have an inherent power or authority to revise their final and binding decisions in some exceptional cases such as fraud and perjury or discovery of some new and determining facts and evidences. The Iran-US Claims Tribunal had been following the same trend for many years in its chamber cases. Recently, the Tribunal in its Decision of 1 July 2011, came to this conclusion that the Tribunal has no authority for revision, due to lack of express language of the procedural rules of the Tribunal as well as the silence of the Algeria's Accords in this regard. This paper will examine the Tribunal's practice with regard to the question of the revision in past and will analyze the recent Decision of 1 July, 2011 in this context.