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

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Professor Bermann is a scholar with diverse academic interests. He is widely associated at Columbia Law School with being one of the world’s leading specialists in international arbitration, not only as an academic but also as an arbitrator. This makes sense. He teaches several courses on international commercial and investment arbitration, and is the Director of the Center for International Commercial and Investment Arbitration at Columbia Law School.  But international arbitration is just one of his areas of specialty.  He is also well-regarded in the law of the European Union and transnational litigation.

Professor Bermann’s varied scholarship means that he does not view international arbitration in isolation. His article, “What Does it Mean to Be ‘Pro-Arbitration’?,” makes clear that one must assess the virtues and demerits of international arbitration with reference to national and regional courts and also wider public policy trends regarding whether international arbitration is a suitable or appropriate form of resolution of certain types of disputes.  When doing so, one needs to investigate all of the various layers before making a pronouncement that a particular jurisdiction is “pro-arbitration” or that international arbitration is per se superior to counterpart litigation. Professor Bermann invites—welcomes—the complexity of the inquiry of what it means to be pro-arbitration even if it means that the conclusion is a classic “well, it depends . . .”