Review of Substantive Reasoning of International Arbitral Awards by National Courts: Ensuring One-Stop Adjudication

Abstract

REASONING IS required for most international arbitration awards, whether under the applicable arbitration rules or law.1 The reasoning deals with various issues. It deals with the jurisdictional and procedural issues in the arbitration, as well as the evaluation of the factual and legal positions of the parties. The evaluation of the factual and legal position of the parties is referred to in this article as the ‘substantive reasoning’ to distinguish it from the reasoning relating to jurisdiction and procedure, or the ‘jurisdictional or procedural reasoning’. Within the area of substantive reasoning, national courts have perhaps a more natural tendency to accept the primacy of the arbitral tribunal with respect to factual issues, as it corresponds to the role of some courts of first instance in the national court system. For legal reasoning, however, national courts – and indeed some Arbitration Acts such as the English Arbitration Act of 1996 – appear hesitant to accord the last word to the arbitral tribunal, at least as to matters of local law.