The subject of this Special Supplement to the ICC International Court of Arbitration Bulletin reflects the sophistication of contemporary arbitration. Over the years, arbitration has developed into a fully-fledged and widely-recognized method of obtaining legal redress. Its status has been endorsed in countless statutes throughout the world and by the thousands of parties who each year use it as a means of resolving their disputes.

Arbitration's increasing maturity is due in large part to the growing demands that are placed upon it. Arbitral tribunals nowadays are regularly faced with disputes that go beyond the two-party, one-contract scenario. Even disputes ostensibly confined to such a scenario may in fact turn out to relate to other disputes that are or have been the subject of separate proceedings. Furthermore, the contract underlying a dispute may be part of a series of contracts involving other parties besides those named in the proceedings. Faced with such situations, arbitrators have been required to find solutions to the complicated procedural problems they raise.

Similar problems have, of course, occurred in litigation, so it has been a natural reflex to consider how they have been handled by the courts. However, the analogy can only be taken so far, given the inherent differences between litigation and arbitration. As a process based on a contractual undertaking, arbitration has an overriding duty to respect party autonomy. Consequently, the parameters within which procedural problems are to be solved differ in certain important respects from those obtaining in a judicial context. Besides, by opting for arbitration, parties deliberately choose to avoid the courts.

It is our privilege to publish in the present volume a collection of articles each looking at a particular aspect of the procedural implications of complex arbitrations. The result is a rich tapestry, the fruit of the practical experience of the distinguished contributors, all highly aware of the specificity of arbitration. Thanks are due in particular to Horacio Grigera Naón, former Secretary General of the ICC Court, to whom we owe the initial conception of this anthology. I hope this volume will prove to be a fitting sequel to ICC's previous publications on multiparty arbitration.1

Robert Briner

Chairman

ICC International Court of Arbitration

1
Guide on Multi-Party Arbitration under the Rules of the ICC Court of Arbitration, ICC Publication 404 (1982); Multi-Party Arbitration: Views from International Arbitration Specialists, ICC Publication 480/1 (1991); Final Report on Multi-Party Arbitrations produced under the auspices of ICC's Commission on International Arbitration, ICC International Court of Arbitration Bulletin, vol. 6, no. 1, May 1995, pp. 26-50.