The Gaillard Lecture is an itinerant lecture series created in memory of Professor Emmanuel Gaillard, a founding partner of our firm and one of the most influential theorists on international arbitration. On 14 May 2025, Toby Landau KC delivered the 4th edition of the Gaillard Lecture at the Copacabana Palace theatre in Rio de Janeiro discussing “Adjectives, Abuse and Bad Faith – Reconsidering Ethics and the Rule of Law”. Previous lectures were held in Paris, London and Cairo.
The lecture took the audience through a journey. After celebrating Emmanuel Gaillard’s flamboyant yet measured style of advocacy, Toby Landau noted that the first step of the journey was acknowledging that “the conduct of counsel in our field is too often characterized by excessive aggression, abusive strategy and a lack of ethics”. He admonished that this behavior, left unchecked, may constitute a threat to arbitration as a universally trusted mechanism to solve disputes. He drew a parallel as to how counsel frequently act as a combatant taking the audience through a broader spectrum of counsel pervasive behavior that begins with innocuous intensifiers quickly escalating to deliberate accusations, ad hominem attacks and other forms of bad behavior, all of which undermine the integrity of arbitration.
Toby Landau noted the importance of arbitral courage, a topic on which Emmanuel Gaillard frequently touched upon1, to face due process paranoia and sanction unethical behavior. The key solution to avoid undermining the transnational system of dispute resolution, that will also give tribunals the courage to step in, is “for us all to recognize that the problem we are facing affects international rule of law”.
The next step of the journey was a description of the critical interrelationships between the transnational system of dispute resolution and international rule of law. Among these interrelationships, the role of counsel has an integral role in the rule of law because counsel conduct bears on the quality, effectiveness, legitimacy and fairness of the process. If counsel misbehaves, the system breaks down, Toby Landau said. In conclusion, he urged counsel to honor the “special status of near constitutional responsibility” to uphold the international rule of law.
Gaillard Banifatemi Shelbaya Disputes thanks Toby Landau KC for another masterful lecture and the important reminder of safekeeping the highest ethical standards in the exercise of advocacy.
Please find below the video of the lecture, and a selection of photos.
1. 2018 Lalive Lecture: E. Gaillard, “The Myth of Harmony in International Arbitration”, Lalive Lecture, 34 ICSID Review 553 (2020)
To find out more about Emmanuel Gaillard’s writings, please refer to his extensive bibliography.
