Originally from American Review of International Arbitration - ARIA

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KEYNOTE LUNCHEON PRESENTATION:
ARBITRATORS AND THE COURTS
Lord Leonard H. Hoffmann of Chedworth∗
Presiding Officer: Jennifer Smith∗∗

Jennifer Smith: To introduce our speaker this afternoon, we have Dean Larry
Sager. Dean Sager is, of course, the Dean of the University of Texas School of
Law. He holds the Alice Jane Drysdale Sheffield Regents Chair and is one of the
nation’s preeminent constitutional theorists and scholars, a graduate of Columbia
Law School and Pomona College. Dean Sager taught for more than 25 years at the
New York University School of Law. At Texas he has been deeply involved with
the law school’s successful faculty recruitment efforts, setting a tone of intellectual
ambition, identifying talent to join the faculty, and as a final note for those of you, as
I am, who are alums of the University of Texas, it has been widely publicized that
Dean Sager has also promised to add $200 million dollars to the Law School’s
endowment by 2014. So consider yourself warned, Dean Sager.

Dean Sager: Thank you very much. I won’t begin by passing the hat but that’s
only because the hat’s not nearly big enough, so we can all have a conversation
later about this one-on-one. I’m very glad to be here this afternoon. First to
welcome all of you on behalf of the University of Texas School of Law and our
new and really glowing Center for Global Energy, Environmental Law and
International Arbitration. Arbitration is not a distant cousin of this, it’s really
integral to what we’re interested in and today’s proceedings indicate how really
rich a topic it is so I’m very glad to be here for that reason and I’m deeply
honored to be here for my assigned task of introducing you to Lord Leonard
Hoffmann.

If I can refer to a biographical note for just a moment, until at least the
Deanship descended on me, I was an American constitutional scholar and
constitutional theorist. Now there is an interesting feature of constitutional
scholarship in the United States, especially in the hands of people like me whose
scholarship includes and embraces the Warren Court era in this country, and that
is we tend to hold courts in very, very high esteem and as a result, we revere them
not just as institutions but the men and women who populate them—judges.
Indeed, most constitutional scholars, I think, would say that what makes the
Constitution interesting is the degree to which it judicializes certain important
political choices in constitutional communities. Now we think of constitutional