Abstract

A problem that arises from time to time in international arbitration proceedings is how an arbitral tribunal is to deal with the evidence of a non-appearing witness. The applicable rules of arbitration typically confirm that the tribunal has the authority to determine (e.g.) the “admissibility, relevance, materiality and weight of the evidence offered,” but they rarely go any further than this. The purpose of this article is to seek to provide guidance to tribunals by reviewing the available arbitral practice. This reveals that there are circumstances in which tribunals have adopted broadly consistent approaches to the status of the non-appearing witness's written testimony (although this does not appear to extend to the treatment of a non-appearing expert's evidence), and that tribunals have generally not distinguished between the existence of a valid reason for a witness's failure to appear, or of exceptional circumstances which would warrant the witness's evidence being admitted. In addition, tribunals appear to be reluctant to place much weight on a non-appearing witness's written evidence unless it is corroborated by the testimony of other witnesses or documentary evidence, and they are also reluctant to draw adverse inferences from a witness's non-appearance.

中文翻译：

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不愿出席证人的证词在国际仲裁中的地位

摘要

国际仲裁程序中不时出现的一个问题是，仲裁庭如何处理不出庭证人的证据。适用的仲裁规则通常确认仲裁庭有权确定（例如）“所提供证据的可采性，相关性，实质性和重要性”，但除此以外，它们很少能做得更多。本文的目的是通过审查可用的仲裁实践来寻求对法庭的指导。这表明，在某些情况下，法庭对未出庭证人的书面证词的地位采用了广泛一致的方法（尽管这似乎并不适用于对未出庭证人的证据的处理），并且法庭通常不区分存在证人不出庭的正当理由，或存在可以保证证人被接纳为证人的特殊情况。此外，除非其他证人的证词或书面证据佐证，否则法庭似乎不愿对不出庭的证人的书面证据给予过多的重视，而且法庭也不愿从证人的不出席中得出不利的推论。