Reed Smith partner Gautam Bhattacharyya sits down with Professor Yarik Kryvoi, Senior Research Fellow in International Economic Law and Director of the Investment Treaty Forum at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. Yarik reflects on his career journey, highlighting the mentors who influenced his path. The duo then discuss the interplay between corruption and arbitration, the evolving role of public international law in the global legal landscape, and the intricacies of sanctions regimes and their impact on arbitration, before turning to the challenges arbitrators face when navigating these complex issues – and Yarik's love of judo.

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Transcript:

Intro: Hello and welcome to Arbitral Insights, a podcast series brought to you by our international arbitration practice lawyers here at Reed Smith. I'm Peter Rosher, Global Head of Reed Smith's International Arbitration Practice. I hope you enjoy the industry commentary, insights and anecdotes we share with you in the course of this series, wherever in the world you are. If you have any questions about any of the topics discussed, please do contact our speakers. And with that, let's get started. 

Gautam: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to our Spotlight On podcast series. And I'm delighted that our spotlight today is on Professor Yarik Kryvoi. Hello, Yarik. 

Yarik: Hi, Gautam. 

Gautam: It's really nice to see you. Yarik is a senior fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, and he's also a director at the Investment Treaty Forum and a very well-noted and well-regarded academic in the areas of public international law and associated areas. So it's a real pleasure to be doing this podcast with you, Yarik, and I look forward to our discussion. There's going to be a number of things that we're going to talk about, which I know our listeners will find very, very interesting, given your very, very interesting background and your areas of specialism. So thank you again for joining me, Yarik. 

Yarik: My pleasure. 

Gautam: So let me first of all ask you about your background and if you could tell our listeners a little bit about your background and what drew you to the areas of international arbitration and public law, which of course you specialize in and which you teach. 

Yarik: Yes, happy to talk about that So I've been in London for around 15 years of my life, so the last 15 years. And I first came here to work as an associate at one London-based law firm And prior to that I was based in Washington, D.C. where I also worked for another law firm doing primarily international arbitration work and going back prior to that Immediately prior to that I did an LLM at Harvard Law School, and prior to that, I was based in my home country, which is Belarus. So I was born in Belarus, I grew up there, but I did my first law degree actually in Russia. And after that, I also did degrees in England, in the Netherlands, and in the United States. So my path towards international arbitration was not very straightforward, because initially I was more interested in public international law, in international labor law, so more public side of public international law, if I may say so. But then I understood that there is not that much work for people who do just purely PIL. And if you want to work with international law issues, then you need to be a bit more of a generalist and be flexible and do commercial arbitration. And at some point, I discovered the area of investor-state arbitration, which is somewhere on the border between public international law and domestic law. So you have an interaction of domestic legal systems and public international law, important public policy issues are also decided in this context. And that was intellectually challenging, and that was also something quite sophisticated and quite new at that time. Even though I was in Washington, D.C., at that time, the area of ISDS was not as well-developed and as fancy as it is today. So that was sort of my reasoning why I wanted to explore more this area. And just before joining a law firm in Washington, D.C., I did a short clerkship. I worked as an extern law clerk for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is quite an important court in the United States because it has jurisdiction over many disputes which involve public international law issues. And sometimes you hear about annulment proceedings or Guantanamo cases or whatever. So a very important case, a very important court, and I had a chance to work on some of PIL cases also within the context of domestic courts. And now I've been in London, as I mentioned, for a few years already, for, well, soon it will be two decades, and here I combine academic work, practical work, as well as other activities. I will be happy to discuss those later today. 

Gautam: Thank you very much, Yarik. Now, that's a very, very interesting background. You certainly studied in many countries. You worked in many countries. And, you know, I suppose this explains why you are so international in your outlook, in what you teach, and in your academic interests of research. And we'll come to that. And I'll certainly be following up with you on some of the points that you spoke about there, because I know they'll be of interest to our listeners, and they're certainly going to be of interest to me. So so let me ask you this next in the course of your journey so far which we've obviously ascertained is a very interesting one and a very international one who along that journey have been your biggest inspirations and who've given you your biggest guidance and your biggest mentorship to make you the person you are today, 

Yarik: Yeah, it's a good question. Because I started arbitration and investor state arbitration work fairly late in my career, so after I did my first PhD, the influence of people also so when I was doing my first law degree, I was not particularly focused on one area. So it was more generally international law and domestic law. But then once my focus has become more clear, I think already when I was doing my LLM at Harvard, at that time, arbitration was not even taught there. But there were some other areas of law which were very well taught. And for example, I was quite interested in law and economics classes. And it was possible to attend joint seminars of the Department of Economics of Harvard University and Harvard Law School, where they brought together students, or mostly LLM students and PhD students from Harvard and from these two departments of Harvard. And we discussed various areas and how to use law to regulate particular issues, a variety of topics, from damages to most efficient dispute resolution mechanisms. So this way of thinking about law as an instrument to deal with real-life issues, I think that was quite inspiring. And, for example, Andrei Schleifer, professor of economics, was there. And Louis Kaplow, who is professor of law and economics at Harvard Law School. So they certainly impacted me. Then when I worked for Judge Stephen Williams in Washington, D.C., the common law approach, the approach of judges to common law issues, understanding law, interpreting law, including public international law, had also great influence on me. I remember working on one case which involved. An archive of one Jewish group, which was confiscated by Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. And then this Jewish group was trying to sue the Russian Federation to get those documents back from Russian archives, and they relied on various international law concepts. And so it was possible to see how international law works in practice and how closely it's linked with politics and with history and Judge Williams at that time and he was a great mentor, unfortunately he passed away a few years ago and then i found my first job and partners who worked there Mark Bravin for example he used to work on the with the cases on the Iran-U.S. claims tribunals in early years of this tribunal and we had a case uh representing government of Romania in Roussalis vs Romania and I was in charge of preparing arguments on counterclaims. And it was still very novel at that time. Nothing has been written on counterclaims. So I had to come up with my own arguments. And then I published the first ever article on counterclaims in investor state issue settlement. And then when I moved to London, well, London is great when it comes to human capital and the number of people who are great experts in the area, particularly when I joined the British Institute of International and comparative law. We have a great advisory board. But actually, even before I joined, when I was interviewed for my job, I was interviewed by the then director of the institute, Robert McCorquodale, but also by Johnny Vida and by Audley Sheppard. Unfortunately, Johnny Vida passed away as well a few years ago, but I still remain in contact with Audley Sheppard, with other people on the advisory board, for example, Professor Andrea Bjorklund, with Robert Volterra and others. So we regularly were in touch to discuss events, discuss projects and so i feel very privileged to be able to work with with people of this sort of expertise and reputation 

Gautam: Well there's some great names there and some really big names there who you've mentioned and you know and you know no doubt been huge inspirations to you and you know and i think this is an area of law i can remember Yarik when i was a young law student many years ago, and it was many, many years ago. Of public international law wasn't really that well-known at all. And I'm thinking back to my first degree that I began in