Originally from Reflections on International Arbitration - Essays in Honour of Professor George Bermann

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I. INTRODUCTION

In recent times, George Bermann is best known and has received high praise for his role as the Chief Reporter for the American Law Institute’s new Restatement of the Law on U.S. Law of International Commercial and Investor-State Arbitration.  I too share great admiration and respect for George’s leadership on the ALI project and the extraordinary volume(s) that he and his co-reporters have produced.   For that reason, I expect that many of the contributors to this Festschrift in honor of George will focus on various topics taken up in the Arbitration Restatement as well as George’s prolific scholarship in the international arbitration field more generally, including issues addressed in his Hague Academy General Course on Arbitration and Private International Law.   Indeed, I myself was initially tempted to select an issue of international arbitration to write about for this tribute. However, George’s expertise and productivity is much broader than international arbitration, and thus I decided to choose a topic in transnational litigation more generally where George has also left a distinctive mark.   As just one example of why George Bermann’s name is so well-known to law students around the world interested in international litigation, George was the original and sole author of the popular West Nutshell on Transnational Litigation (2003), now in its second edition with William (Bill) Dodge and Donald (Trey) Childress as co-authors.