International Arbitration - Main Features of International Arbitration

Main Features of International Arbitration

International arbitration has enjoyed growing popularity with business and other users over the past 50 years. There are a number of reasons that parties elect to have their international disputes resolved through arbitration. These include the desire to avoid the uncertainties and local practices associated with litigation in national courts, the desire to obtain a quicker, more efficient decision, the relative enforceability of arbitration agreements and arbitral awards (as contrasted with forum selection clauses and national court judgments), the commercial expertise of arbitrators, the parties' freedom to select and design the arbitral procedures, confidentiality and other benefits.

International arbitration is sometimes described as a hybrid form of dispute resolution, which permits parties broad flexibility in designing arbitral procedures. As one example, consider the International Bar Association (IBA)'s Rules on the Taking of Evidence in International Commercial Arbitration, revised in 2010. These rules adopt neither the common law jurisdictions' broad disclosure procedures (Discovery), nor follow fully the civil law in eliminating entirely the ability to engage in some disclosure-related practices. The IBA Rules blend common and civil systems so that parties may narrowly tailor disclosure to the agreement's particular subject matter.

David Rivkin, who chaired the committee that drafted the rules, has noted that the wide adoption of these rules in international arbitration has led in practice to an unexpected use by common law practitioners to limit disclosure and by civil law practitioners to expand it. With a possibly more intuitive cause and practical effect, arbitral tribunals will often read party election of the IBA Rules as an election most akin to US-style Discovery. This is hardly surprising given the Rules' language and the IBA's close ties through the years to the American Bar Association (ABA).

Rules of evidence represents just one example of the different practice that applies to international arbitration, and which distinguishes it from provincial forms of arbitration rooted in the procedures of a particular legal system. There are a variety of approaches to international arbitration at the national level, even where model laws have been adopted. These approaches can be further impacted by arbitral rules that may be agreed between the parties. Similarly, international arbitral practice has given rise to its own non-country-specific standards of ethical conduct which are believed to apply in international proceedings and, more to the point, to the arbitrators who are appointed to conduct them.