Originally from Search for Truth in Arbitration: Is Finding the Truth What Dispute Resolution Is About? - ASA Special Series No. 35

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1. The word “truth” understood as veritas (or “vérité” in French) reflects from the legal point of view in general a multifaceted concept.1 Particularly, in the Middle Eastern legal traditions it possesses a strong religious component. Either envisaged from the Judeo-Christian moral origins or within the specific Islamic prevailing heritage, the ultimate veritas transcends to God and to revelations contained in the Holy Books. Consequently, the search for the truth in a given situation has to be guided by those fundamental implicit moral principles considered as premises on which the entire socio-economic and governmental structure is based.

2. In the process of administering justice under Arab-Islamic domestic legal systems with regard to a concrete case, either by a judge or by an arbitrator, the focus has to envisage the elaboration of an appropriate solution that corresponds to what the decision-maker conceives as being the “truth”. The intellectual mechanism engaged in this respect has necessarily to be influenced by the various elements which constitute the global image of the person’s vision of the reality, whether material, moral, psychological or inherently acquired ideas forming an integral part of the legal system under which he was raised and educated.

3. Among the salient aspects of the differences between the western legal cultures and the historical heritage of the Arab-Islamic Middle East, we have to start by emphasizing the relatively new concept of community of citizens, enjoying equality regardless of their race, sex or religion.