Author: Alexander K.A. Greenawalt*
Published: April 2008
| Topics: Dispute Resolution and Litigation Mandatory Rules |
Description: If the articles in this volume are any guide, the role of mandatory rules in international arbitration remains a persistent source of debate. The basic problem is a straightforward one: contractual arbitration arises as a matter of the parties’ consent, but the resolution of contractual disputes can implicate mandatory rules of law that are not waivable and are typically designed to protect broader public rights. Since national legal systems began ceding the application of mandatory rules to party-appointed arbitrators, scholars of international arbitration have struggled to come to grips with the implications of this reality for the resolution of cross-border disputes in which the public policy of several states is at stake.
The literature on mandatory rules has often presented the issue in stark terms, as posing a fundamental “conflict between the will of the State having promulgated the mandatory rules of law, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the will of the parties–from which [the arbitrator’s] own authority is derived.” Asserting an independent public duty to protect national mandatory laws as well as the enforceability of arbitral awards, a number of writers have further urged arbitrators to apply a so-called “mandatory rules method” to determine, regardless of what the parties have agreed, which particular mandatory rules to apply in a particular dispute. Although the details of the method differ from author to author, the basic proposition is that arbitrators should apply a stand-alone balancing test that considers, based on the nature of the rule and the connection to the parties’ transaction, the strength of a particular state’s interest in having its mandatory rules enforced.
In these remarks, I take a skeptical view of the mandatory rules literature and argue that arbitration of mandatory rules is readily handled within the standard, contractual view of arbitration. In particular, I argue that the alleged conflict…
*Associate Professor of Law, Pace University School of Law. The author had the privilege of presenting an earlier draft of this article at the Colloquium on Mandatory Rules of Law in International Arbitration, held at Columbia Law School on June 8, 2007. He extends his gratitude to organizers George A. Bermann and Loukas Mistelis and to the other participants in the colloquium for their helpful comments.