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

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“You need to write simple. It does not matter how complex the topic. If you want, take a look at my latest article to get a feel.” These were George Bermann’s instructions to me when I was stepping in as his Senior Researcher on the Restatement of the U.S. Law (III) of International Commercial and Investor-State Arbitration. 

Upon reading the suggested article, I figured that Prof. Bermann had first split into atomic particles and then reconciled fifty years of winding U.S. federal courts jurisprudence on the question of “arbitrability” (in the U.S. meaning of the term). Then, with an equally remarkable ease, Prof. Bermann had proceeded to provide a normative systematization of the intricacies of the distribution of jurisdictional mandates between courts and arbitration tribunals.

At first glance, what is “pro-arbitration,” rolls easy on the tongue, but its ostensible simplicity, could in the right hands uncover layers of complexity. As Prof. Bermann posits in his article “I first explore the wide range of meanings that the single hyphenated term ‘pro-arbitration’, having a distinctly facile ring to it, is meant to convey. This inquiry is very much a definitional one, albeit one that yields a multiplicity of definitions.”