The Issue of Confidentiality in International Commercial Arbitration

Abstract

The confidentiality of international arbitration proceedings and awards is one area with a crying need for corrective hands today. The conflicting needs of confidentiality and transparency in arbitration have compelled badly the courts and law makers to come with the innovations to harmonize the conflict. The road of confidentiality in international arbitration meets a dead end after crossing the barrier of ‘privacy’ as no national or institutional laws provide expressly for confidentiality (barring few exceptions like New Zealand) because of its inherent complications. This article attempts to strike a balance between virtue and vice of confidentiality in the area of arbitration.