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

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At its core, arbitration is nothing more than a form of consent-based dispute resolution: one in which chosen decision-makers issue binding decisions on the parties’ claims in accordance with an agreed adjudicatory procedure.  Practitioners sometimes see it through a different lens, however. It is an embodiment of personal or party autonomy. In its international guise, it is variously a tool to promote international commerce and business, a conduit to strengthen the rule of law or a means to prevent or resolve international conflicts.

The exaltation of “Arbitration”—capital “A,” qua a lofty archetype—is to some extent a function of its pedigree: the roots of inter-State arbitration and commercial arbitration alike reach back to antiquity, after all.  It is, perhaps, also a function of the fact that countless battles are fought to ensure recognition of the right to arbitrate or to define its scope in specific disputes. The legal mechanisms to which recourse is often had in such contexts—in contract-based disputes, the presumption of separability of the arbitration agreement (or even specific parts of the agreement), or the offer-acceptance model in treaty-based investment disputes—encourage the idea that arbitration stands apart.
When considering whether a policy or practice is “pro” arbitration, scholarly writings therefore often consider whether it serves the interest of “Arbitration” (capital “A”).