Originally from American Review of International Arbitration - ARIA

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COLLECTIVE REDRESS IN INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION:
AN AMERICAN IDEA, A EUROPEAN CONCEPT?
Jan-Krzysztof Dunin-Wasowicz*

La loi, en général, est la raison humaine, en tant qu’elle gouverne tous les peuples
de la terre; et les lois politiques et civiles de chaque nation ne doivent être que les
cas particuliers où s’applique cette raison humaine. Elles doivent être tellement
propres au peuple pour lequel elles sont faites, que c’est un très grand hasard si
celles d’une nation peuvent convenir à une autre.1
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois

INTRODUCTION

It is a near platitude in a business environment defined by global transactions
and cross-border ventures, that arbitration is the preferred means for disposing of
international disputes.2 Though uniformly praised, international arbitration is
grounded in disparate predicates; its roots are eclectic and its evolution gleans
from traditions of sundry legal orders,3 resulting in an intensely “crosspollinat[
ed]”4 practice. While the “constitutional charter”5 of the international
arbitral process, the New York Convention,6 was drafted at a time when
arbitration was generically a bilateral process,7 today arbitration clauses are
commonplace in transactions involving hundreds, if not thousands of parties.8
Consider the globalization of capital markets, for instance. Mass claims, however,
are a relatively new phenomenon9 in both international public10 and private
dispute resolution.11