Originally from Pro-Arbitration Revisited: A Tribute to Professor George Bermann from his Students Over the Years

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As Professor Bermann observes in his article on the pro-arbitration idea, arbitration lawyers are uniquely concerned not just with their cases, but with the ecosystem of arbitration at large. Unlike domestic court litigation, which benefits from sticky institutional rules, commercial arbitration’s reliance on party choice requires heightened attention to its own well-being.
This concern makes arbitration fertile ground for legal innovation, not least in terms of legal technologies. For instance, the potentials of artificial intelligence (AI) for arbitration have been increasingly considered in articles and panels over the past few years. The discussion has, however, been dominated by technical considerations—technological and legal potentials and roadblocks, rather than normative questions geared towards the health of arbitration as a legal system.

To satisfy this oversight, and to refine our understanding of what AI arbitration has to offer, Professor Bermann’s framework is indispensable. If Professor Bermann’s clarion call is to rationalize and analyze what have hitherto been pro- and anti-arbitration labels affixed by unexamined intuition, AI arbitration is an especially apt subject. The questions AI arbitration raises are exceedingly rich, ranging from the nitty-gritty of implementation to lofty and perennial questions concerning what constitutes (good) legal decision-making. This breadth of range is matched only by a depth of prejudice. Artificial intelligence occupies the public imagination as a double-edged sword, as the playful promise of The Jetsons and the nightmare of Skynet. Professor Bermann’s framework helps us set these phantoms aside, and concentrate on building the future.