Party-Appointed Arbitrators in International Commercial Arbitration

the long version

"This book's central critical assessment addresses several issues including:limits to the right of the parties to make unilateral appointments; the principle of equality of the parties in the constitution of the arbitral tribunal; arbitrators' duty to be impartial and independent; specific problems of bias in tribunals with party-appointed members; the question of whether a different standard of impartiality and independence in party-appointed arbitrators makes any sense; the presumption that party-appointed arbitrators can do things that presiding arbitrators cannot; and the question of whether it is worth keeping the system of unilateral appointments as the default method for the constitution of multiple-member tribunals, or keeping it at all. This empirical study, in which the author offers a comparative analysis of challenges of arbitrators taking into account the method of appointment of the arbitrator, reveals interesting differences and coincidences between party-appointed and non-party appointed arbitrators.The book ends with some suggestions on how the system of unilateral appointments could be improved, namely in order to increase the trust of each party in the arbitrator appointed by the other party and to allow an accurate match between what arbitration end-users may want from party-appointed arbitrators and what they ultimately get."--