International Arbitration in the 21st Century: Towards "Judicialization" and Uniformity?, edited by Richard B. Lillich and Charles N. Brower. Irvington, New York: Transnational Publishers, Inc., 1994. Pp. 279, hard cover. 

In March 1992, a symposium called the "Twelfth Sokol Colloquium" was held at Charlottesville, Virginia. The papers then delivered, suitably edited, make up this book.

The colloquium was concerned with the "judicialization" of international arbitration (i.e., the supposed tendency of arbitral tribunals to imitate courts) and the uniformity (or diversity) of such proceedings. After a review of the principal papers, special attention is paid to Professor Clifford Larsen's study of punitive damages in international arbitration in light of a subsequent decision of the United States Supreme Court on the subject.

Judge Howard Holtzmann, of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, devotes his paper to the importance of achieving a balance between flexibility and certainty in international arbitrations. He sees a need for rigidity at the beginning and end of a proceeding, while permitting free play at the intermediate stage. Clear and mandatory rules must aply to the initiation of the proceeding by the parties and to the making of the award by the tribunal, but the arbitrators should be allowed to run the show as they see fit once the case is underway. This is hardly epiphanic: most institutional rules take this view.