International Arbitration and Global Governance: Contending Theories and Evidence

Most literature on international arbitration is practice-oriented, technical, promotional, and largely serves as expansion of practice and advertisement. Outside analyses by non-participants are rare. This book steps away from this tradition to reflect upon international arbitration as a form of global governance, thus contributing to a growing literature on the profound economic, legal, and political transformation in which key governance functions are increasingly exercised by a new constellation that includes actors other than national public authorities. Leading scholars from law and the social sciences assess and critically reflect on the significance and implications of international arbitration as a new locus of global private authority. Predictably, views diverge. Some see the evolution of these private courts as a significant element of an emerging transnational private legal system that 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 driven by powerful transnational companies at the expense of collective public interests. Still others accept that these contrasting views serve as useful starting points, but are too simplistic to adequately understand the complex governance structures that have been developing over the last two decades. In sum, this book offers a wide-ranging and up-to-date overview of arguments in a vigorous interdisciplinary debate about arbitration courts and their exercise of private governance power in the transnational realm. This debate generates fascinating insights into topics such as legitimacy, constitutional order and justice beyond classical nation-state institutions.

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