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# Kompetenz-Kompetenz — But How Far Does It Really Go?
- URL: https://internationalarbitrationobserver.com/kompetenz-kompetenz-but-how-far-does-it-really-go/
- Published: 2026-09-12T19:53:03.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-12T19:53:03.000Z
- Author: Pierluigi Salvati
- Tags: Commercial Arbitration

How much jurisdictional error is enough to stop an arbitration? One of the less glamorous — but more consequential — questions in arbitration is not simply who decides jurisdiction, but when a court should be allowed to intervene.  
  
A recent judgment of the Supreme Court of India raises that question in an interesting way. The dispute concerned the jurisdiction of an arbitral tribunal over alleged non-signatories. The tribunal rejected their jurisdictional objection. The decision was then challenged before a court while the arbitration was still pending. The Supreme Court declined to allow that intervention.  
  
But the interesting point is not that courts should never review jurisdictional decisions. They plainly can. The Court drew the line elsewhere: interlocutory judicial intervention requires something approaching a patent lack of inherent jurisdiction — not simply an arguable error in the tribunal's reasoning.  
That distinction is important.

Jurisdictional objections, particularly in non-signatory cases (often involving the 'Group of Companies' doctrine), can involve complex questions of corporate relationships, conduct, the transaction as a whole and the parties' alleged intention to arbitrate. Those questions are not necessarily suitable for being litigated twice before the arbitration has even reached an award.  
  
Otherwise, kompetenz-kompetenz risks becoming a rather fragile principle:  
the tribunal decides jurisdiction — until someone asks another court to decide whether the tribunal was right.  
  
But there is an equally important qualification. Judicial review remains necessary where the tribunal manifestly has no jurisdiction. The issue is therefore not whether courts should supervise jurisdiction, but where the threshold for intervention should be drawn.  
  
That is the real lesson: the effectiveness of kompetenz-kompetenz depends not only on giving the tribunal the first word, but on deciding how difficult it should be to obtain the court's word before the award. And that is a question that travels well beyond any single jurisdiction.