East Meets West: Tradition, Globalization and the Future of Arbitration

THE TOPIC that the organizers have chosen for this paper is not at all surprising. East does meet West in Sydney, since geographically Australia is East but its people – most Australians – culturally and by tradition look West. In the world of arbitration, however, East did not meet West, not for a long time. For many years, the rules and practices of international arbitration were looked upon as being solely for the protection of businesses of the Western industrial world, which led to a chasm of distrust in the developing and underdeveloped world. When public corporations from the Third World were unsuccessful in disputing claims of large multinational corporations, they always expressed their disappointment with the system, not with the merit or demerit of the cases that were lost. In fact, in 1963, after the kingdom of Saudi Arabia lost a famous international arbitration case1 (wrongly, it was...