NORDIC

MARTINUS i^

NITHOFF
PUBLISHERS Nordic Journal of International Law 81 (2012) 605-606 brill.com/iiord

Book Review

K. Hober, International Commercial Arbitration in Sweden, Oxford University

The current Swedish Arbitration Act (No. 1999:116) is in the first place intended
to govern Swedish domestic arbitrations, having no international implications.
However, the rules of the Act apply also to international arbitration whenever the
procedural issue at hand is governed by Swedish law, and a number of sections in
the Act (sections 46-60) deal with matters specific to international arbitration,
such as the determination of the legal system applicable to the arbitral proceed-
ings, the legal system governing the validity of an arbitration agreement, the rec-
ognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards, etc. Sweden is a popular
venue for international commercial arbitration even regarding disputes having no
natural Swedish connection at all. In fact, in most international arbitral proceed-
ings filed with the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce,
all parties are foreign. Almost all international arbitral proceedings are conducted
in English, even in those cases where the arbitrators are Swedish and all parties are
represented by Swedish lawyers, but the only authentic version of the 1999
Arbitration Act is in Swedish.
Sweden has the disadvantage of having a legal system with a working language
which is not widely understood beyond the Nordic area of Europe. It is, there-
fore, crucial for the maintaining of Sweden as an important arbitral venue, as well
as for the proper functioning of the individual proceedings, that the relevant parts
of Swedish law are made accessible in English. The Stockholm Chamber of
Commerce published a comprehensive handbook for this purpose as early as in
1977.' Another important source of information in English used to be the peri-
odical Yearbook of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce,
subsequently replaced by the Stockholm Arbitration Report, later called Stockholm
International Arbitration Review. There is, however, also a great need of a compre-
hensive and systematic English-language presentation of Swedish arbitration law,
not merely for the benefit of foreign parties, foreign arbitrators and foreign advo-
cates but even for those Swedish jurists who look for linguistic guidance in respect
of the English legal terminology to be used in connection with Swedish arbitral
proceedings. A relatively recent commentary of this kind by F. Madsen has

" See the hook Arbitration in Sweden, which appeared in a second (revised) edition in 1984.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI 10.1163/15718107-08104008

appeared in several editions.^ The purpose of the new handbook reviewed here,
written by Professor Kaj Hober, is to analyse and describe Swedish arbitration law
as per 1 December 2010.
The main text of the new book is divided into nine chapters, with self-
explanatory headings: Introduction, Applicable Law, The Arbitration Agreement,
The Arbitrators, Jurisdiction of the Arbitral Tribunal, The Procedure before the
Arbitral Tribunal, The Award, Setting Aside Arbitral Awards, and Recognition
and Enforcement of Arbitral Awards. These nine chapters are followed by nine
appendices containing the most important legal texts and other materials as well
as a relatively detailed index. The main text is preceded by tables of cases and of
legislation.
For the readers of the Nordic Journal ofInternational Law, the most interesting
parts of the book deal with issues of public and/or private international law. For
example, on pp. 10—31 the author discusses the controversial question about the
role sovereign immunity plays and should play (or rather should not play) in
international commercial arbitration. The important decision of the Swedish
Supreme Court in NJA 2011 s. 475, concerning the enforceability in Sweden of
a judgment against the Russian Federation, however, came too late to be taken
into account in the book. Proper attention is paid in the book also to the conflict-
of-laws questions, regarding both the designation of the law governing substan-
tive issues in dispute and matters concerning arbitration as such, for example the
designation of the law governing the arbitration agreement (see in particular pp.
33-88). The possibilities of challenging arbitral awards due to the failure of the
arbitrators to apply the law agreed on by the parties or because the arbitral pro-
ceedings should not have taken place in Sweden are dealt with on pp. 320—327.
Enforcement in Sweden of foreign awards is treated on pp. 357—373; these rules
are basically transposed from the New York Convention on the Recognition and
Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards of 1958.
The book benefits greatly from the fact that its author is a legal practitioner
with substantial experience in the field of international commercial arbitration,
even though Dr. Hober is also a prolific legal writer and was recently appointed
to a professorial position at the University of Uppsala. His new book constitutes
a valuable contribution to the existing Swedish legal literature on arbitration and
will undoubtedly be of great use to both arbitrators and advocates involved in
arbitration proceedings in Sweden.

Michael Bogdan
Professor of Law, University of Lund, Sweden

^' See E Madsen, Commercial Arbitration in Sweden. A Commentary on the Arbitration Act
(1999:116) and the Rules of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, 3rd ed.,
Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007.
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