From March 28 to April 1, the Paris Arbitration Week was held, an opportunity to discuss many current issues related to international arbitration. The pandemic episode spared no one, forcing a renewal and alternative dispute resolution methods did not escape it. But what are the future prospects for international arbitration ?
Arbitration, because of its speed of implementation and flexibility, has proven to be the optimal solution during a health crisis and has proved its worth in the context of a slowdown in the justice system. Frequently used in the field of international trade, the crisis has led to an extension of this method of dispute resolution to many other legal fields. Indeed, as Thomas Clay pointed out during a webinar dedicated to Covid-19, “Thanks to the crisis, we now see arbitration in family matters, in employment contracts and I even hear about initiatives in commercial leases“.
The possible virtuality of international arbitration has extended the field of possibilities, allowing not to put on pause its legal litigation the time of a pandemic which will have lasted much longer than we thought… A rather promising future for international arbitration…
A decree of October 25, 2019 had indeed already allowed the development of online arbitration. But the Club des juristes has very well underlined, “There is reason to be optimistic about the development of online arbitration, provided that it is controlled, and does not give in to the ease of arbitrators completely replaced by algorithms“, especially since some cases do not necessarily lend themselves to this virtuality.
On the environmental level as well, the doctrine has pointed out the lack of ecological considerations that international arbitration entails, which implies numerous trips all over the world… Virtuality has thus helped with this issue.
In an increasingly internationalized and globalized society and where international arbitration as a method of dispute resolution is becoming more and more widespread, its victory against the pandemic showed that it still has a bright future ahead of it and in many fields…
