Bibliographie sélective OHADA

It is nowadays generally accepted that international commercial arbitration is the most popular method of resolving international disputes between commercial parties. This popularity is the cumulative result of many advantages that international commercial arbitration offers to the parties. It is suggested in the literature that one of these advantages is the freedom of parties and the resulting procedural flexibility. In virtue of this principle, the parties have the opportunity to establish a specific method of adjudication adapted to the nature of their dispute. This opportunity is provided by the fact that the arbitration regulations do not include detailed rules on the collection of evidence, thus leaving the parties and the arbitrators' range of motion. Therefore, we consider that this procedural flexibility has emerged as a possibility obtained at the expense of certainty in international commercial arbitration proceedings. This uncertainty is to such an extent that it also warrants the question as to whether there is an applicable law to take evidence in international commercial arbitration proceedings. Such procedural flexibility afforded to the parties, however, comes at a price of uncertainty with respect to arbitral procedure. International commercial arbitration developed as a reaction to the failings of proceedings in domestic courts, which were subject to detailed rules of evidence. Thus, the consensus in the arbitration community is that party freedom and the procedural flexibility that comes with it are fundamental attributes of arbitration. Although this presumption is theoretically correct; in other words, the parties are indeed able to craft such a procedure that would perfectly fit for adjudication of their disputes, mostly it does not reflect the practical reality. In practice, when parties are negotiating the terms of an agreement to govern their business relationship, they generally tend to avoid discussions as to what will happen if things go wrong. As a matter of fact, according to our practice experiences, when one of the parties' legal counsel tries to address such hypothetical scenarios, the parties generally prefer to suppress such "negative thoughts" and refuse to make in-depth discussions as to how a possible dispute is to be handled. Hereby, this leaves open the question of the procedure to be followed in arbitration proceedings in case of potential disputes. As a result, the provisions on how to resolve disputes that may arise between the parties, in other words, the "dispute resolution" provisions, are left to the very end of the negotiations and passed over in a few sentences. When the relationship between the parties becomes truly strained and a dispute comes to an unavoidable stage, it becomes even less likely that the parties will agree on how to gather evidence on the dispute in question. In a such situation, any suggestions made by one party regarding the procedure for the taking of evidence will be viewed with suspicion by the other party. In an environment of suspicion and animosity, it is often unrealistic to expect productive negotiations to take place on procedural matters. As a result, although the parties have a wide range of motions to make agreements regarding the method of collecting evidence in arbitration proceedings, they are often unable to exercise this authority in practice. As the parties are not exercising their rule-making powers, this important task, which is decisive for the resolution of the dispute, shifts to the arbitrators. Therefore, in our opinion, it would not be a wrong assessment to say that the freedom of the parties has turned into the freedom of the arbitrator in practice. Once appointed, arbitrators have to decide on many issues with respect to the taking of evidence as rules applicable to arbitration are generally silent as to these matters. Although arbitrators have the opportunity to be guided by some non-binding rules, such as the IBA Rules and the Prague Rules, which are considered to be effective and instructive in the arbitration community, they are ultimately left to make their assessments and reach an award based on their judgment. The above-mentioned non-binding rules can undoubtedly assist arbitral tribunals to a certain extent with regard to the taking of evidence. However, it is not possible to say that these rules are enforceable guidelines that can be blindly followed by arbitral tribunals. A closer look at these rules reveals that they leave many issues to the discretion of the arbitral tribunals. Of course, any decision regarding the taking of evidence in international commercial arbitration is already within the discretion of the arbitral tribunals, even in the absence of these rules. Therefore, these provisions, which have been drafted to allow the arbitral tribunals to decide as they see fit, are no more than general guidance on how to exercise their discretion. For these reasons, even if the parties have agreed on the application of these non-binding rules, the fact remains that the collection and evaluation of evidence are still left to the discretion of the arbitral tribunals. This study takes an inductive approach by analyzing the normative and non-binding rules of law applicable to evidence in international commercial arbitration. Firstly, this study examines whether there is a body of rules that can be characterized as the law of evidence in international commercial arbitration. It is determined that there is a law of evidence in international commercial arbitration; however, its content is rather composed of general principles. After determining that these rules have normative value, it is examined how and to what extent these general principles are concretized in terms of the types of evidence used in international commercial arbitration. Although the degree of concretization of these principles varies according to the types of evidence, as a general characteristic, it is determined that arbitral tribunals are left with a very wide discretionary power. It is concluded that arbitral tribunals have a wide latitude of action with respect to the submission of documents, the presentation of witness testimony, the use of expert testimony, the use of discovery and the extent of the res judicata effect of a prior award. Subsequently, the rules on the admissibility and evaluation of evidence are analyzed and it is concluded that the arbitral tribunals have wide discretion in international commercial arbitration, as in other matters relating to evidence and even the discretion regarding the evaluation of evidence is relatively wider. Since it is difficult to review the discretionary power exercised in these matters, it is observed that the arbitral tribunals' decisions on evidentiary issues fall outside the scope of judicial review. This leads to a further blurring of the already grey evidentiary issues in international commercial arbitration proceedings. This is because it is not possible to determine the extent to which the arbitral tribunal has relied on evidence that ostensibly played a role during the proceedings. In the last instance, although the arbitrators' discretionary powers are limited by general principles such as due process and opportunity to be heard, the limits of such discretionary powers are, generally speaking, somewhat blurred as these are general principles. Another issue is that arbitral tribunals are often subject to pressure from the parties when making their decisions on the taking of evidence during the arbitral proceedings. The parties are more interested in being the winner of the concrete proceedings than in the proper conduct of the proceedings in accordance with the law, procedure and rules. In this sense, a party whose request for evidence is likely to be rejected will often argue that the arbitral tribunal's decision violates the principle of a fair trial, even if this is not the case. It is in these circumstances that arbitral tribunals must strike a balance between a fair trial and an efficient trial and make appropriate decisions on evidentiary issues. If arbitral tribunals emphasize procedural efficiency and defer to the parties' presentation of their claims and defences, this may not in itself constitute an obstacle to legally correct decisions. However, this would violate the fundamental procedural safeguards of the participants in the proceedings and may even lead to arbitration proceedings becoming a mechanism for arbitrary and haphazard decision-making. If the opposite approach is taken, in other words, if the priority is to uncover the material truth at all costs and the procedural economy is put on the back burner, this will result in costly and protracted proceedings that will far exceed the limits of reasonableness. Given the limited scope of the guidelines available to arbitrators on the collection and evaluation of evidence, striking this balance is not an easy task. Therefore, it is quite understandable that arbitral tribunals, when deciding on evidentiary issues, may prefer the safer route and give precedence to claims of breach of the principle of a fair trial, even at the expense of the efficiency of the proceedings. Additionally, the confidential nature of the international commercial arbitral proceedings also amplifies the problem. As a result of this principle, the available knowledge as to the practice of arbitration becomes limited to anecdotal stories as to what has happened in certain individual international commercial arbitration proceedings. The arbitrators do not have sufficient opportunity to know about how their colleagues have dealt with certain issues that may have similarities with the issues that they have been trying to solve. In conclusion, in light of the foregoing, since the arbitral tribunals are the rule-makers of arbitration proceedings, the extent to which arbitration proceedings will function correctly and efficiently depends on the experience of the arbitral tribunals and their knowledge of the law, procedure and rules. Basing a correct and efficient arbitration procedure solely on the initiative of experienced arbitrators reduces the 'certainty' of the arbitral procedure. In the face of this situation, it may be tempting to argue that it is inappropriate for arbitrators to have so much freedom and that the rules applicable to arbitral proceedings should be revised to be more detailed. Indeed, there are those who argue that such a change should take place. In the final analysis, a good system should be able to function well regardless of how qualified (or unqualified) its participants are. It is obvious that an argument that sees detailed procedural rules as a remedy for this would contradict the historical development of arbitration and therefore would not be accepted by the international arbitration community. Likewise, from the other side of the coin, it could be argued that detailed procedural rules that are not appropriate to the nature of the individual dispute would prevent qualified and experienced arbitral tribunals from formulating rules that are appropriate to the resolution of the dispute in question, and that the hands of arbitral tribunals may be tied in this way. Although it may be argued that these counter-arguments are equally justified, they do not negate the fact that certainty should be ensured in international commercial arbitration proceedings. Therefore, this suggests that it may be appropriate to resort to alternative methods to ensure certainty. Indeed, it would be a mistake to assume that the only way to achieve certainty is through a detailed set of rules, as we, as legal practitioners in the Continental European legal system, are accustomed to. In the countries subject to the Common Law system, many branches of law do not have such a detailed set of rules and therefore it is not possible to claim that these legal systems lack certainty. Especially in the common law, certainty is provided by case law. If the same logic were to be applied to international commercial arbitration proceedings, it would mean that making information on arbitration proceedings more accessible could help to achieve the goal of certainty. In recent years, there have been some initiatives recognizing the benefits of this approach. While arbitral tribunals are under no obligation to follow the decisions of other arbitral tribunals, having the opportunity to see that there is a consistent pattern of decisions on a particular issue would undoubtedly provide valuable guidance for arbitral tribunals. As the pool of information available to arbitral tribunals and the parties expands, it is obvious that the grey areas regarding evidence in international commercial arbitration will diminish over time. In this way, it will be possible to achieve greater certainty without undermining the fundamental values of the arbitral procedure. Reducing the uncertainty caused by procedural flexibility on procedural certainty in this way will contribute significantly to the development of international commercial arbitration.