Examining a developing culture of international commercial arbitration and the implications for the evolution of contract law, this book includes case studies and analysis from interviews with international arbitrators and national court judges, and identifies trends to explain and predict arbitration decisions on issues of substantive law.

This book offers an in-depth study of the role of culture in modern day arbitral proceedings. It contains a detailed analysis of how cultural miscommunication affects the accuracy, efficiency, fairness, and legitimacy in both commercial and investment arbitration when the arbitrators and the parties, their counsel and witnesses come from diverse legal traditions and cultures. The book provides a comprehensive definition of culture, and methodically documents and examines the epistemology of determining facts in various legal traditions and how the mixing of traditions influences the outcome.

The development of international arbitration as an autonomous legal order comprises one of the most remarkable stories of institution building at the global level over the past century. Today, transnational firms and states settle their most important commercial and investment disputes not in courts, but in arbitral centres, a tightly networked set of organizations that compete with one another for docket, resources, and influence. In this book, Alec Stone Sweet and Florian Grisel show that international arbitration has undergone a self-sustaining process of institutional evolution that has steadily enhanced arbitral authority. This judicialization process was sustained by the explosion of trade and investment, which generated a steady stream of high stakes disputes, and the efforts of elite arbitrators and the major centres to construct arbitration as a viable substitute for litigation in domestic courts. For their part, state officials (as legislators and treaty makers), and national judges (as enforcers of arbitral awards), have not just adapted to the expansion of arbitration; they have heavily invested in it, extending the arbitral order's reach and effectiveness. Arbitration's very success has, nonetheless, raised serious questions about its legitimacy as a mode of transnational governance. The book provides a clear causal theory of judicialization, original data collection and analysis, and a broad, relatively non-technical overview of the evolution of the arbitral order. Each chapter compares international commercial and investor-state arbitration, across clearly specified measures of judicialization and governance. Topics include: the evolution of procedures; the development of precedent and the demand for appeal; balancing in the public interest; legitimacy debates and proposals for systemic reform. This book is a timely assessment of how arbitration has risen to become a key component of international economic law and why its future is far from settled.

Providing a theoretical examination of the concept of arbitration, this book explores the place of arbitration in the legal process and examines the ethical challenges to arbitral authority and its moral hazards.

The School of International Arbitration of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London celebrated its 30th anniversary in April 2015 with a major conference featuring presentations by 35 international arbitration practitioners and scholars from many countries representing a variety of legal systems. This volume has emerged from that conference. What is striking is not only the range and diversity of the topics examined but also the emergence of new subjects for examination, demonstrating that arbitration law and practice do not stand still but are constantly evolving. The issues and topics covered include the following: - Evolution of case law and practice in international arbitration; - The concept and autonomy of arbitral award; - Parties in international arbitration; - Parallel proceedings in international arbitration; - Court review of arbitration awards; - Geographic expansion of international arbitration; - Counsel regulation and conflicts disclosures; - The use of technology in international arbitration; - Teaching and research in international arbitration. This superbly organised and edited volume, like earlier conference volumes from the School of International Arbitration, is sure to be welcomed and acclaimed, and like them will prove of lasting value.

Most literature on international arbitration is practice-oriented, technical, and promotional. It is by arbitrators and largely for arbitrators and their clients. Outside analyses by non-participants are still very rare. This book boldly steps away from this tradition of scholarship to reflect analytically on international arbitration as a form of global governance. It thus contributes to a rapidly growing literature that describes the profound economic, legal, and political transformation in which key governance functions are increasingly exercised by a new constellation that include actors other than national public authorities. The book brings together leading scholars from law and the social sciences to assess and critically reflect on the significance and implications of international arbitration as a new locus of global private authority. The views predictably diverge. Some see the evolution of these private courts positively as a significant element of an emerging transnational private legal system that gradually evolves according to the needs of market actors without much state interference. Others fear that private courts allow transnational actors to circumvent state regulation and create an illegitimate judicial system that is driven by powerful transnational companies at the expense of collective public interests. Still others accept that these contrasting views serve as useful starting points of an analysis but are too simplistic to adequately understand the complex governance structures that international arbitration courts have been developing over the last two decades. In sum, this book offers a wide-ranging and up-to-date analytical overview of arguments in a vigorous nascent interdisciplinary debate about arbitration courts and their exercise of private governance power in the transnational realm. This debate is generating fascinating new insights into such central topics as legitimacy, constitutional order and justice beyond classical nation state institutions.

This Handbook brings together many of the key scholars and leading practitioners in international arbitration, to present and examine cutting-edge knowledge in the field. Innovative in its breadth of coverage, chapter-topics range from the practicalities of how arbitration works, to big picture discussions of the actors involved and the values that underpin it. The book includes critical analysis of some of international arbitrations most controversial aspects, whilst providing a nuanced account overall that allows readers to draw their own informed conclusions. The book is divided into six parts, after an introduction discussing the formation of knowledge in the field. Part I provides an overview of the key legal notions needed to understand how international arbitration technically works, such as the relation between arbitration and law, the power of arbitral tribunals to make decisions, the appointment of arbitrators, and the role of public policy. Part II focuses on key actors in international arbitration, such as arbitrators, parties choosing arbitrators, and civil society. Part III examines the central values at stake in the field, including efficiency, legal certainty, and constitutional ideals. Part IV discusses intellectual paradigms structuring the thinking in and about international arbitration, such as the idea of autonomous transnational legal orders and conflicts of law. Part V presents the empirical evidence we currently have about the operations and effects of both commercial and investment arbitration. Finally, Part VI provides different disciplinary perspectives on international arbitration, including historical, sociological, literary, economic, and psychological accounts.