Reflections of an International Arbitrator

Abstract

It's really a great pleasure for me to be back here at an organization that I used to know as the Southwestern Legal Foundation. I regret to say that I'm such a fossil that I can't even remember the name of the current organization. Donald Donovan asked for a little historical perspective on the art of arbitrating. The title of this conference is, indeed, quite apt: international arbitration is not a science, it's an art. And you picked up some of that this morning, because lawyers disagree on what is the appropriate way of conducting an international arbitration. But if you think things are bad now, put yourself back at the time when I got out of law school in 1958. Number one, the law of the United States was that arbitration clauses were revocable at the will of either party. So every lawyer who drafted an international arbitration clause in an agreement was guilty of malpractice, because those clauses were unenforceable. The art of arbitration means what? In the 1950s, you had to be very practical. There was no roll-aboard luggage in those days. Lawyers really took briefcases – very heavy briefcases – around the world carrying all those case documents. We had no computers, and we had no e-mail. I can still remember typewriters with carbon paper. Some of you may recall that. Think about this – traveling to Egypt to try an international arbitration in a big power plant case where every four hours the power would go off, and you're busy with your typewriter trying to take notes. There were no court stenographers, nothing called Live Note. There was no teleconferencing. The phones didn't work in half the places in the world. There were no supersonic jets to take you from New York to London and …