Originally from European International Arbitration Review (EIAR)

“Our workers are the most productive on Earth, and if the playing field is level, I promise you: America will always win.”

— Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, January 24, 2012.

“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.” 

— George Orwell, “The Sporting Spirit”, first published in the “Tribune”, December 1945.

I. A Level Playing Field?

Is there a level playing field in international arbitration? Should there be a level playing field? Is it even possible to create a level playing field? These are not particularly difficult questions. I suspect most readers would agree that:

• there is not a level playing field in international arbitration;

• there should be a level playing field; but

• it is probably not possible to create a level playing field.

In fact, as V.V. Veeder QC remarked in his famous Goff Lecture in 2001,2 the issue is rather more complex than simply the matter of a level playing field: