Originally From Arbitration Law of Sweden: Practice and Procedure

The Award

8.1 Introduction

Arbitration means that the dispute is conclusively decided in a way which is binding on the parties. This being so, it is important to guarantee that the arbitrators’ award will be based on a careful application of the law and scrupulous assessment of the evidence. Furthermore, the arbitrators should avoid any challengeable irregularities of procedure, because otherwise the risk is that their award will not settle the dispute once and for all. The arbitrators shall avoid foreseeable and conceivable impediments to enforcement of an award allowing the claims advanced.1 It can be embarrassing for the arbitrators to have an award set aside by a court after a public trial. They can counteract the challenge action by including particulars in the award which show that the matter was correctly handled.2

Efforts to avoid challengeable procedure must not lead to excessive preoccupation with the formal aspects of the procedure, to the detriment of the examination of the substantive issues. The tribunal’s assessments on the merits are of the utmost importance to the parties. The knowledge that an award cannot be challenged on account of such issues being wrongly decided must not lead the arbitrators to limit their rationale to the point of vacancy as a means of avoiding criticism from disgruntled parties. The arbitrators’ main task is to carefully examine the substantive issues and to present their assessments and their award lucidly in written form.

Rules on decision-making and provisions on the content of the award help to give the dispute a substantively correct outcome. But a detailed, comprehensive formal regulation of the genesis and content of the award can make the proceedings complicated and rather slow, and may increase the risk of challenge, without doing much to improve the prospects that disputes will be correctly decided on the merits. Often the evidence produced by the parties’ legal representatives and the personal qualities of the arbitrators are of greater consequence, and rules about the award cannot of themselves ensure safeguards for a correct outcome. Instead the parties have to rely more on the arbitrators making correct assessments and on the legal representatives pleading with sufficient thoroughness to provide an adequate basis for the award.