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

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France is often held up as a model for pro-arbitration laws and policies. In an article entitled “International Commercial Arbitration: The Contribution of the French Jurisprudence,” published in 1986, Arthur Taylor von Mehren discussed the French legal regime’s favorableness towards arbitration and the “pervasive and crucial role” French courts, jurists, and institutions have played in the consolidation of international commercial arbitration. In an article with echoes of von Mehren’s, Emmanuel Gaillard referred to a clear “pensée juridique française” in international arbitration, and elsewhere he described French Court of Cassation case law on international arbitration as “strong and coherent,” a powerfully resonating voice in modern arbitration law. Similarly, Jan Paulsson sang the praises of France’s contribution to international arbitration in his book The Idea of Arbitration, enthusing that “[n]owhere else have the twin lodestars of freedom and internationalization, combined in the conception of a voluntary process that accommodates the reality of a transnational society, shone so bright.”

How, we may ask, did that pro-arbitration regime come about? Much in the manner of classical drama, its unfolding can be recounted in five acts, each corresponding to a period in its history.