ABSTRACT This paper was initially presented orally as the keynote address of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, Canada Branch, programme at Canada Arbitration Week in Toronto on 17 October 2023. The address explores how sitting arbitrators shall respond when a party, or persons evidently aligned with a party, make use of bespoke websites or social media to lodge false and defamatory accusations of arbitrator misconduct that, if true, would warrant disqualification and/or vacatur of any awards already issued on the basis of bias. Among the core observations is that the falsely accused arbitrator ought not to resign—as this is precisely the objective sought by the publisher of the accusations, and the tactic, if successful, seriously threatens the integrity of the arbitral process. A corollary of this observation is that the displeasure naturally felt by the accused arbitrator ought not be generally regarded by the institutions that regulate arbitrator conduct—whether provider organizations or courts—as a species of bias but as a normal human reaction to untoward behaviour by a party or its agents in the course of the proceedings.
Marc J. Goldstein (Fri,) studied this question.