Does arbitration permit a self-sufficient contract? To what extent can relevance be disregarded without affecting the validity and enforceability of an award? What power does the arbitral tribunal have?

The insolvency of a party has considerable effects on all its legal relationships. The restriction imposed by the national insolvency law naturally also affect the ability to pursue claims in arbitration. The entry discusses in its first parts the various types of restrictions contained in the national insolvency laws and their effect on the arbitration agreements, the arbitral tribunals jurisdiction, the arbitration proceedings and the parties involved as well as the underlying policies. In presenting the various approaches adopted, which often differ considerably, exemplary provisions and cases for each approach are presented without focusing on specific jurisdictions. The second part is devoted to the important conflict of laws questions in international cases where the place of arbitration and the place of the insolvency are located in different jurisdictions. They are adressed both from the perspective of the state courts as well as from the perspective of the arbitral tribunal.

Bertil Cottier’s chapter explores the doctrine of ordre public, which allows judges to block the ‘import’ of unacceptable foreign customs and traditions and which has received significant attention in the context of enhanced international relations at the personal and social level, including interethnic marriages and mass immigration. The ordre public doctrine is examined in respect of issues pertaining to family law and succession law, two domains where its impact is most significant since marriage, divorce, filiation and inheritance are deeply rooted in social and religious values. Special attention is paid to the clash, generated by increasing immigration from Muslim countries, between Islamic legal institutions such as polygamy and repudiation and Western principles of equality and non-discrimination.

The chapter discusses the relationship between patent governance, ethics, and democracy, referring to limits in patent law set in democratic decisions by the EU legislator in the EU Biotech Directive. The ordre public clauses in Articles 5 and 6 attempt to "upstream" ethics and anticipatory impact assessment in biotechnology patent law. However, the interpretation of these clauses, especially for inventions concerning human embryonic stem cells, gametes, parthenotes, and genome editing (CRISPR-Cas) techniques, has ignited intense policy debates. Granting practices and case law of the European Patent Office (EPO) and its Boards of Appeal have circumvented some of these legal restrictions, and thus pose challenges for transparency and accountability norms in patent practice. Case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and empirical analyses of patent application and granting practices are scrutinised. The chapter states that interpretation of legal statutes must not be narrowly literal but must also include the history and purpose of the Biotech Directive and the socio-technical and economic implications of its application. This requires that the EPO and the European Commission act transparently and account for their application of the legal rules as set by the European legislator and interpreted by the CJEU.

Article 53 of the European Patent Convention prohibits the grant of patents for plant or animal varieties and for inventions whose commercial exploitation would be contrary to ordre public or morality. These provisions are therefore both criteria for the grant of patents and grounds for opposing granted patents. The interpretation of these provisions and their application to particular cases lies ultimately in the hands of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office which have considered both patent applications and oppositions against granted patents on these grounds. This chapter begins with a summary of the law, the procedure for opposing patents on these grounds and the principal decisions in this field. It then reviews the manner in which opponents of patents other than commercial parties – such as pressure groups, political parties and churches – have organised themselves as opponents. Lastly, it considers how these non-commercial opponents have conducted their cases, their degree of success, whether they could do more to question the grant of life form patents – and whether, as the author considers they should, churches and other organisations with ethical credentials should actively question life form patents.