Legal Business

The Last Word: Fighting your corner

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Our recent International Arbitration Summit in London provoked lively discussion and, ahead of a full report on the debate next month, here is a taster of some of the key points

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‘The once preoccupying debate about what issues you can arbitrate has become of ever-diminishing relevance in the modern world. Almost all commercial disputes today are now arbitral, with fewer and fewer exceptions.

We need to ask ourselves again and again why users are complaining that modern arbitration is, all too often, failing to fulfil the promise of international arbitration as a flexible and streamlined form of dispute resolution, in which the particular process is tailored to the particular issues in play, in a particular case. We need to ask ourselves why mainstream public opinion is often expressing a very open level of criticism about the legitimacy of investment arbitration, which is inevitably spilling over into the commercial arbitration mainstream.’

Constantine Partasides QC, founder, Three Crowns