Rogers: International Arbitration's Public Realm

Catherine A. Rogers (Bocconi Univ. - Law) has posted International Arbitration's Public Realm (in Contemporary Issues in International Arbitration and Mediation: The Fordham Papers, 2010). Here's the abstract:

Domestic arbitration is under attack as permitting repeat players to evade mandatory statutory law, retarding legal developments, undermining democratic lawmaking, and ultimately imposing substantively biased outcomes on less sophisticated parties through contracts of adhesion. Collectively, these critiques of domestic arbitration could be interpreted as suggesting that domestic arbitration seeks to obviate or even subvert public interests and the public realm. The thesis of this chapter is that, in contrast to criticisms of domestic arbitration, international arbitration has a vibrant public realm. International arbitration has the potential to produce public goods and to go beyond simply resolving disputes, but to also promote international cooperation, transnational governance and the development of the international rule of law.