Academic Exchange and Cooperative Partnerships

Fellowship programme with the Arbitration and Mediation Centre of the Brazil-Canada Chamber of Commerce in Sao Paulo

This partnership is designed to facilitate research stays of up to three months by Brazilian doctoral and post-doctoral scholars. The research stays aim to advance comparative scholarly study in the nascent field of Brazilian arbitration law. By focusing on arbitration law, they also build upon one of the Centre of Expertise’s traditional areas of research.

The arbitration law that Brazil passed in 1996 gives it one of Latin America’s most modern legal regimes in this area. Through this statute, Brazil sought to reduce the burden on the justice system and thereby particularly to provide investors with a way of avoiding the excessively lengthy proceedings of state courts. The statute also represents an important building block in a strategy of harmonising the Brazilian legal system to international standards. Regarding steps towards international harmonisation, which specifically include the 2002 ratification of the New York Arbitration Convention of 1958, however, serious misgivings remain about non-state actors’ intervention in state sovereignty. It was only in 2015 that Brazil began to conclude bilateral investment protection agreements (with Mozambique, Angola and Mexico), but they do not include arbitration clauses. Brazil has not acceded to the ICSID Convention.

The efforts by the governments of Brazil and Germany to intensify exchange between the two countries in 2013, through the Science Without Borders (“Ciências sem Fronteiras”) programme, inspired the Arbitration and Mediation Centre of the Brazil-Canada Chamber of Commerce, one of Brazil’s leading arbitration institutions, and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law to enter into a cooperative partnership.

Cooperation with jurists’ associations

The Centre of Expertise maintains long-term ties with the German-Brazilian Jurists’ Association (DBJV).

It also has close contact with the Argentine-German Jurists’ Association (ADJV), the German-Lusitanian Jurists’ Association (DLJV) and the German-Mexican Jurists’ Association (DMJV).