THE AUTHOR:
Giulia Favaron, Associate at Galíndez Arb.
About the Event
The 24th International Arbitration Congress (“Congress”) of the Brazilian Arbitration Committee (CBAr) was held in Rio de Janeiro from September 17 to 19, 2025. The event fostered in-depth discussions on the overarching theme of “Integrity” and its symbiotic relationship with arbitration.
On September 17, the CBAr Jovem (an initiative dedicated to extending CBAr’s institutional mission to a younger generation of practitioners) led two panels in prelude to the Congress. Titled “Arbitration in the Brazilian Civil Code Reform Bill (PL 4/2025)” and “Arbitrators’ Assistants and Integrity: Secretaries, Experts, Technical Consultants, and Others,” these sessions set the stage for the days to come.
Panel I Highlights – Arbitration in the Brazilian Civil Code Reform Bill (Bill 4/2025)
The current Brazilian Civil Code, despite being a relatively recent instrument enacted in 2002, faces the challenge of remaining apt to address the ever-changing socioeconomic dynamics. Bill 4/2025 originates from a commission of jurists that proposes changes to over a thousand articles of the current Brazilian Civil Code and related legislation. This bill has sparked intense debate within the Brazilian legal community regarding the necessity, timeliness, and potential impacts of such a comprehensive reform.
Considering this landscape, the first panel delved into some specific implications of Bill 4/2025 for arbitration and related civil law matters. Moderated by Pietro Webber and featuring panellists José Victor Zakia, Inaê Oliveira, and Ana Paula Mageste, the discussion critically assessed the bill’s consistency with the Brazilian Arbitration Act (Law No. 9.307/1996) and its potential impact on the integrity of arbitration in Brazil.
The panel opened by scrutinizing the legislative value of repetition. Oliveira spearheaded this point, arguing that Bill 4/2025’s proposal to transpose language from the Brazilian Arbitration Act to the Brazilian Civil Code lacks a strong technical rationale. She warned that such redundancy is not merely superfluous but risks creating interpretative ambiguity, which could cloud legislative intent, disrupt ongoing proceedings, and undermine procedural expediency.
The conversation then shifted to Bill 4/2025’s intent to codify the established jurisprudential stance of the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice (“STJ”) in relation to binding an insurer to arbitral jurisdiction if it was aware of the arbitration clause in the original contract. The panel expressed reservations about elevating this understanding to statute. A key concern was that, in arbitration doctrine, mere awareness does not equate to the consent required to bind a party to arbitration.
Further debate centred on Bill 4/2025’s introduction of distinctly judicial instruments (namely, an “arbitral summons” and a “protest on the case record”) into arbitral proceedings. Mageste critiqued both propositions and cautioned that importing such concepts to arbitration risks creating friction with the established and well-functioning framework of the Brazilian Arbitration Act. The panel consensus highlighted a clear need for deeper doctrinal development to determine how these procedural mechanisms could be coherently integrated into the flexible universe of arbitration.
The discussions around Bill 4/2025’s proposal to include compensation for “indirect damages” within the general regime of civil liability were another highlight. The panel explored the ambiguity of this concept, questioning whether it refers to reflective loss or other forms of consequential damage. It was further observed that the proposal poses a potential conflict with established provisions in Brazilian law, which limit recovery to direct and immediate damages.
The new rules on contract termination and revision also emerged as a contentious point during the panel’s discussion. While Bill 4/2025 attempts to synthesize concepts from different theories (including hardship and the objective basis of contracts), its proposed wording significantly broadens the scope for judicial revision. Zakia highlighted that, although such changes aim to modernize contractual relations, they overlap with other legal provisions and may create further uncertainty regarding the limits of judicial intervention.
The moderator concluded by delivering the panel’s final remarks. Webber asserted that Bill 4/2025, in its attempt to incorporate arbitration into the Brazilian Civil Code, would introduce redundancy and ambiguity, creating potential conflicts with Brazil’s specialized arbitration framework. He referenced the CBAr Technical Note on Bill 4/2025, published on August 19, 2025, aligning the panel’s view with its finding that the proposed amendments pertaining to arbitration are detrimental to the Brazilian legal system. This detriment stems not only from the unnecessary nature of the changes but also from the significant interpretive challenges they would pose.
Panel II Perspectives – Arbitrators’ Assistants and Integrity: Secretaries, Experts, Technical Consultants, and Others
The second panel, moderated by Fabiana Almeida and featuring Fabio Nuñez Del Prado, André Petersen, and Julia Girão Baptista Martins as debaters, adopted an interactive format. Almeida guided the discussion by posing pivotal questions to the panellists, who subsequently unpacked the integrity challenges inherent to the functions of various arbitral assistants.
The discussion commenced with an examination of the arbitral secretary’s role from the secretary’s own perspective. In response to the moderator’s prompt, Martins emphasized the secretary’s duty to zealously uphold the principles of impartiality and integrity through the proceedings. She delineated the role by distinguishing between purely administrative tasks and more substantive contributions. While she affirmed that the use of a secretary enhances procedural efficiency and celerity, she firmly situated this practice within the necessary framework of ethical boundaries and stressed that core adjudicative functions remain of the exclusive prerogative of the arbitrators.
Shifting the focus to the standpoint of party-appointed and tribunal-appointed experts, Almeida prompted an analysis of impartiality. Petersen addressed this issue by dissecting the complex notion of bias, proposing a taxonomy of distinct types. He explained, for instance, that “bias of origin” is an inherent characteristic of a party-appointed technical consultant but is impermissible for a tribunal-appointed expert. Petersen further distinguished “cognitive bias”, which arises from an expert’s pre-established doctrinal position, from the more subtle influences that could be exerted by a tribunal appointed technical assistant. This nuanced analysis revealed that integrity challenges for experts are not a binary matter of being biased or impartial, but a spectrum requiring careful management. It reinforces the tribunal’s critical duty to not only select experts with integrity but also to understand and mitigate the various forms of bias they may introduce, thereby protecting the legitimacy of the fact-finding process.
Finally, Almeida raised a fundamental question regarding the permissible limits of a secretary’s influence on the tribunal’s decision-making process, this time from an attorney/party viewpoint. In his response, Del Prado argued forcefully that secretaries must not participate in the tribunal’s deliberations. He contended that deliberation is a core and sacrosanct function of the arbitral tribunal, and any involvement by a secretary in this process could exert undue influence on the case’s outcome.
This opinion was later corroborated by Martins, who affirmed that, for instance, when elaborating a draft award, the tribunal’s secretary should be limited to formulating the introductory and procedural parts of the document, leaving the substantive reasoning and findings to the arbitrators themselves. This exchange underscored the panel’s consensus: that while arbitral assistants are invaluable for the efficiency of the proceedings, their roles must be clearly defined and rigorously constrained by ethical imperatives to safeguard the integrity of the arbitral process as a whole.
Concluding Reflections on the CBAr Jovem Event
Together, the two panels hosted by CBAr Jovem masterfully illustrated the multifaceted nature of integrity in arbitration, framing it as a fundamental pillar that demands continuous vigilance.
Through an in-depth analysis of distinct yet complementary themes, the panellists and moderators provided a compelling exploration of integrity, one that resonated profoundly with the Congress’s theme. They successfully demonstrated that integrity is not merely a feature but an essential precondition for a legitimate and effective arbitration. Ultimately, for arbitration to fulfil its purpose, the pursuit of integrity must be an evergreen endeavour. This requires a dual commitment from the entire arbitration community: externally, through institutional advocacy aimed at defending its pillar standards, and internally, through the unwavering adoption of integrity as a guiding professional principle.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Giulia Favaron is an associate at Galíndez Arb. with extensive experience as an arbitral tribunal secretary under various institutions, including the ICC, CAM-CCBC, and CAM-B3. She also acts as counsel in domestic and international arbitrations and is fluent in Portuguese and English, with a working knowledge of Spanish.
*The views and opinions expressed by authors are theirs and do not necessarily reflect those of their organizations, employers, or Daily Jus, Jus Mundi, or Jus Connect.
* This article was published by the authors in Valor Econômico, and translated to English and adapted for publication on DailyJus.
