Extraordinary Means of Appeal to Arbitration Awards: revisiting the concept of finality of arbitral awards in the Iranian legal system

Arbitration is the process during which the parties to a dispute grant third party/parties the authority to settle the dispute and undertake to accept the issued award as final and binding. One of the most important advantages of an arbitration award is its finality, which could naturally reduce costs and processing time. This said it is not always the case that arbitral awards are final and the legislator has prescribed certain corrective mechanisms. Assuming that ordinary appeal procedures are not available for arbitral awards, this article sets out to examine the possibility of applying extra-ordinary methods of appeal envisaged in Civil Procedures Act to arbitral awards. The extraordinary methods include appeal to the supreme court, retrials and appeal by third-parties. In domestic arbitration, where the parties are Iranian nationals, appeal by third-parties is more likely to happen, and in international commercial arbitration, retrial is recognized, and appeal by third-parties is also possible. Of all this in domestic arbitration where both parties are Iranian, appeal by third parties is possible an in international arbitration some sort of retrial has been envisaged in addition to third part appeals. Of course, court judgments on the request for annulment of arbitration awards could be subject to ordinary and extraordinary appeal mechanisms.