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

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I. INTRODUCTION

The matter of mandatory rules of the seat and, in general, issues of delocalization have always been of particular interest to me. When I came to Prof. Bermann’s class in 2013 as a young arbitration enthusiast, I had the preconceived notion that if I was to be a real international arbitration practitioner, I had to believe in a delocalized international system not bound to domestic rules. “Real” international arbitration had to be detached from “domestic” (i.e., “bad”) rules that lacked the sophistication of international rules. 

Professor Bermann broke that preconceived notion. I distinctly recall the class discussion in which I was left with the impression that if we were to promote arbitration, we needed it to be regulated. A strong international arbitration community needed clear rules to thrive. And those rules were (at least in the commercial arbitration setting), by and large, national rules.

The issue was not for naught. In Latin America, arbitration practitioners tend to discuss whether States A or B’s new regulations infringe on international arbitration principles.