The twelfth joint colloquium organised by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the American Arbitration Association (AAA) was held at ICC Headquarters in Paris, on November 17, 1995. It was devoted to one specific subject: the status of the arbitrator. As one colloquium succeeds another, the subjects that speakers and other participants are asked to cover are becoming increasingly specific and practical, but also more difficult, and inexhaustible.

In the general sense of the term, an arbitrator is a person chosen to carry out a sort of mediation between opposing claims or ambitions, with a view to avoiding a conflict of interest and restoring harmony within a family, a group, a company, a profession and even between states. In its legal sense, the task of the arbitrator is much more precise because his award has the final and binding character of a court decision based on reasoned arguments of both fact and law, after giving each party a full opportunity of presenting his case. Unlike attorneys, arbitrators are bound by an obligation of result, an obligation to settle a dispute legally - the whole of the dispute and nothing but the dispute - both finally and enforceably. Accordingly, it is clear that the arbitrator's status is akin to that of the judge and hence comprises important and specific obligations and protections.

In international trade, determining the status of the arbitrator is even more difficult and is becoming increasingly important. Indeed the number of disputes is increasing in the widest variety of fields, between parties from different backgrounds, particularly at the cultural and legal levels. There are numerous international arbitrators, originating from a wide variety of countries, from all continents and all civilisations. Arbitral tribunals themselves often comprise people from a variety of different cultural backgrounds and professional origins.

At the national level, the status of the arbitrator does not pose any problems in principle; it is governed by the domestic law of each country concerned. The situation is different in the case of international arbitration, which has to adopt a neutral stance with regard to any sovereign state.

Moreover, one cannot avoid raising the question of the national law applicable to the arbitrator and his activity, which will depend on his nationality, his residence, the place where he carries out his professional activity, the place of arbitration, and possibly the place where his award is to be enforced. The consideration of these factors must be combined with a consideration of the case law of the relevant national courts whose judgments will not always coincide, will not necessarily be easy to explain or to reconcile, and may turn out to be more or less favourable to the arbitration and the arbitrator. Sometimes this will depend on the type of culture of the country concerned, and sometimes on the view the judge takes of the arbitrator himself - an opinion which is not always favourable and encouraging.

Other elements of the arbitrator's status, of his rights and obligations, may depend on contractual stipulations, and in particular in certain cases on the actual wording of clauses of the contract concluded between the parties to the case. In institutional arbitration, naturally reference will have to be made to the rules of arbitration chosen by the parties and the practice followed by the institution supervising their application. The feature of many of these rules is precisely that they provide a measure of control over the arbitrators' activity, and hence determine the elements of their legal, professional and financial situation. Indeed, in Professor Philippe Fouchard's report, the ICC Commission on International Arbitration sanctioned this approach.

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These two types of norms are not the only ones. There is another source of rules applicable to the arbitrator's status and task: those stemming from general legal principles, or more precisely, from those of the said principles that order and govern any good form of justice: independence, impartiality, honesty, diligence, equal treatment of the parties, examination of arguments and evidence, study of the rule of law, deliberation of the decision and in addition, in arbitration, business secrecy. This set of professional ethical standards has sometimes been set out in codes of practice drawn up by various associations or institutions, but the legal force of such codes is very debatable. In actual fact, the national courts in particular have the task of drawing attention to these obligations and sanctioning compliance with them when they are asked to rule on the validity of awards.

In this connection, it should be clearly noted that the way arbitration is received will often vary from one country to another depending on ideologies, religions, regimes and political structures, in other words it is variable, uncertain, suspicions, fragile, and dependent on the power of the state as soon as a difficulty arises. This explains the vulnerability of the function of arbitration. Accordingly, it is understandable that the legal questions stemming from it are complex ones. Moreover, often practitioners and academic lawyers provide differing answers, even in countries that are substantially open to international trade, as has been confirmed by the reports presented to this colloquium. Hence, caution, tolerance and moderation must be the order of the day in the approach to these subjects and in the expression of the wish for the progressive emergence of an arbitral culture that is accepted by all.

International trade is developing in a world full of serious political, financial, economic and cultural tensions. Arbitration ( an expanding and burgeoning activity ( will only prosper as a universally accepted legal facility provided the solutions it offers to litigants are respected and applied, and on condition that they are appropriately prepared and expressed. National judges, who are not necessarily in favour of this form of dispute settlement, will hence carefully monitor the quality of awards, in other words, particularly from the standpoint of the arbitrators' compliance with the various legal rules that make up their status. With each succeeding year, the institutions responsible for administering arbitrations need to pay ever closer attention to the contribution that they can make to efforts aimed at reassurance, detente and cooperation between nations. This effort is vital if peace is to be maintained.