The Social and Psychological Underpinnings of Commercial Arbitration in Europe

当争端出现时，企业面临一个两难境地：他们希望司法裁决的确定性，但往往发现法院的速度缓慢、效率低下和/或缺乏灵活性。商业仲裁已发展成为解决这一困境的主要办法，它提供了一个私人的、灵活的和用户控制的过程，同时也提供了一个将由法院执行的具有约束力的裁决。但商事仲裁给各国造成了一种两难境地：支持仲裁有助于企业界，并使法院能够将其有限的资源转用于其他领域，但仲裁的私人和保密性质实际上使企业能够在国家的支持下，但最终不受国家控制地运作一个自主的法律的程序。它被用来解决大量的或大或小的争端。2013年，国际商会国际仲裁法院收到767份启动仲裁请求，伦敦国际仲裁法院收到301份，斯德哥尔摩商会收到203份，德国仲裁机构收到121份。这些纠纷往往相当重要：2013年国际刑事法院受理的案件中，有540起涉及价值超过100万美元的纠纷，277起超过1000万美元，63起超过1亿美元。然而，这些数字只代表每年发生的仲裁的一小部分，与更多的仲裁机构在欧洲运作，和大量的仲裁发生没有机构的参与。然而，尽管商业仲裁的突出作用，在提供民事司法，仲裁员的实际做法，在该领域的职业发展机制，而仲裁所提供的公正性仍然被密封在所谓的“黑匣子”中。这是因为，对仲裁的研究受到大多数仲裁程序和裁决的保密性的影响，而且很难收集关于一个专业团体的可靠的经验数据，这个专业团体是异质的，多孔的，跨国的，众所周知很难渗透。通过创新的三角方法，这个项目将打开那个“盒子”。商事仲裁所依赖的体制结构有三大支柱：监管（规则和规范）、规范（培训、合规、内部规则）和文化认知（社会资本、非正式网络、象征性秩序）。既然仲裁作为一种争端解决制度已经达到了成熟的程度，这些支柱就足以成为实证研究的重点。该项目将阐明社会规范和社会关系如何影响仲裁的实践标准和职业发展，从而影响仲裁作为提供民事司法的机制的运作。这样做将实现三件事。首先，通过加深对商业仲裁作为一个专业实践领域发挥作用的过程的理解，将有可能采取更有效的办法，将商业仲裁纳入民事司法系统。其次，它将有助于更好地了解非正式社会规范和社会关系对职业发展和专业领域实践标准的影响。最后，它将大大有助于定性社会科学research.Commercial仲裁方法的发展是一个持续关注的领域，为政府和民间社会在整个欧洲，但仍然知之甚少，因为占主导地位的保密领域。该项目将利用首席研究员在仲裁从业人员中的认可，以及跨学科研究团队的一系列专业知识，对民事司法这一重要但有争议的领域有一个清晰的了解。

Businesses face a dilemma when disputes arise: they would like the certainty of a judicial decision, but often find courts to be slow, inefficient and/or inflexible. Commercial arbitration has developed as the leading solution to this dilemma, providing a private, flexible and user-controlled process, while also delivering a binding decision that will be enforced by courts. But commercial arbitration creates a dilemma for States: support of arbitration assists the business community and allows courts to redirect their limited resources to other areas, but the private and confidential nature of arbitration effectively allows businesses to operate an autonomous legal process, supported by the State but ultimately outside State control.Commercial arbitration has a central place in contemporary dispute resolution, being used to resolve large numbers of disputes of both large and small value. In 2013, the ICC International Court of Arbitration received 767 requests for commencement of an arbitration, the London Court of International Arbitration received 301, the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce received 203 and the German Institution of Arbitration received 121. These were often disputes of considerable importance: 540 of the cases the ICC received in 2013 involved a dispute worth more than US$1m, 277 more than US$10m, and 63 more than US$100m. Yet these numbers represent only a fraction of the arbitrations occurring each year, with many more arbitral institutions operating in Europe, and a large number of arbitrations occurring without the involvement of an institution.Yet despite commercial arbitration's prominent role in the delivery of civil justice, the actual practices of arbitrators, the mechanisms for career development in the field, and the character of the justice arbitration provides remain sealed inside what has been called a "black box". This is because research on arbitration suffers from the confidentiality of most arbitration proceedings and awards, and from the difficulty of collecting robust empirical data on a professional community that is heterogeneous, porous, multinational, and notoriously difficult to penetrate.Through an innovative triangulation of methodologies, this project will open that "box". Commercial arbitration relies on an institutional structure that rests on three pillars: regulative (rules and norms), normative (training, compliance, internal rules), and cultural-cognitive (social capital, informal networks, symbolic orders). Now that arbitration has reached a level of maturity as a dispute resolution system these pillars are sufficiently marked out to be the focus of empirical research. This project will clarify how social norms and social connections impact on standards of practice and career development in arbitration, and thereby on the functioning of arbitration as a mechanism for the delivery of civil justice. In so doing it will achieve three things. Firstly, by developing an enhanced understanding of the processes through which commercial arbitration functions as a field of professional practice, it will make possible more effective approaches to the integration of commercial arbitration into civil justice systems. Secondly, it will contribute to a greater understanding of the impact of informal social norms and social connections on career development and standards of practice in professional fields. Finally, it will contribute significantly to methodological development in qualitative social science research.Commercial arbitration is an ongoing area of concern for both governments and civil society across Europe, but remains poorly understood because of the confidentiality that dominates the field. This project will take advantage of the Principal Investigator's recognition amongst arbitration practitioners, and of the range of expertises of an interdisciplinary research team, to gain a clear understanding of this important, but controversial, area of civil justice.