Festschrift Ahmed Sadek El-Kosheri: From the Arab World to the Globalization of International Law and Arbitration

With this Festschrift, the Bahrain Chamber for Dispute Resolution (BCDR-AAA) is starting a tradition of honoring Arab scholars and practitioners who promote international arbitration and international law.

Over the last few decades, international arbitration institutions and international law societies have generously acknowledged the work of leading scholars and practitioners from the region. The time has come, however, for these individuals to be honored by institutions within the region.

It should come as no surprise that the BCDR-AAA is dedicating this first Festschrift to Professor Dr. Ahmed El-Kosheri. His immense contributions to international commercial arbitration, international investment arbitration and international law more broadly, as well as his significant influence on a generation of lawyers and students from the Arab region and beyond, fully justify this choice.

Dr. El-Kosheri has been counsel or arbitrator in hundreds of arbitration proceedings, including many seminal cases. He was a member of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ad hoc committee chaired by Professor Pierre Lalive that examined the first request for annulment of an ICSID award, and that established foundational principles followed by subsequent ad hoc committees.

He was also the President of the ICSID tribunal that included another legend in the field, the late Professor Berthold Goldman, and that for the first time identified consent on the basis of a bilateral investment treaty, thereby ushering in the modern wave of investment treaty arbitration.