Seven dirty tricks to disrupt an arbitration and the responses of international arbitration law

Abstract

Abstract Disruptions to arbitral proceedings are a well-known phenomenon. At the same time, obstructive behavior is not encountered in every arbitration and most parties will behave in an orderly manner during the course of the arbitration. This, however, does not mean that incidents at the margins of the system of international arbitration should be ignored. If they are not dealt with appropriately, they can spread and infect the entire system. The article focuses on the methodologies available to arbitrators or national courts confronted with tactics developed by litigants in an attempt to disrupt an arbitration to which they had previously consented, and examines seven such attempts as they have developed in the history of international arbitration, together with the responses developed by international arbitration law.