Conversation with Professor Marike Patrani Paulsson

International Commercial Courts: The New Arbitration of 2025 and Beyond

Panel

Professor Jan Paulsson
President Bahrain International Commercial Court

Justice Philip Jeyaretnam
President Singapore International Commercial Court

Professor Joan Donoghue
Judge at the Bahrain International Commercial Court

This conversation, led by Professor Marike Patrani Paulsson, Secretary General of Bahrain’s Council for International Dispute Resolution, is followed by a panel featuring Justice Philip Jeyaretnam, President of the Singapore International Commercial Court, Professor Jan Paulsson, President of the Bahrain International Commercial Court, and Professor Joan E. Donoghue, former President of the International Court of Justice (2021 to 2024). The discussion centers on whether international commercial courts can offer a court based pathway that sophisticated parties will use alongside arbitration.

The starting reference point is arbitration’s enforceability framework under the New York Convention (1958). From that benchmark, the discussion focuses on how court judgments can be recognised and enforced across borders in practice, including reciprocal arrangements, common law actions on the judgment subject to established safeguards, civil law approaches grounded in reciprocity doctrines, and multilateral instruments such as the Hague Choice of Court Agreements Convention. These points are linked to the practical meaning of finality when an outcome must operate outside the forum.

The discussion then turns to what makes a court international in substance, including bench composition, language and counsel participation, procedure, and case management. The Bahrain-Singapore model is used to test those issues through its appeal pathway to a Singapore designated body, including questions of sovereignty and consent and the technical interface between a civil law first instance and a common law appellate approach. The discussion also addresses governing law choices in cross border commerce, including situations where the applicable law is neither Bahrain’s nor Singapore’s, and what that implies for predictability, procedure, and user confidence.