The Social and Psychological Underpinnings of Commercial Arbitration in Europe

当纠纷出现时，企业面临两难境地：他们希望司法裁决具有确定性，但往往发现法院行动缓慢、效率低下和/或缺乏灵活性。商事仲裁已经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，同时也提供了一个有约束力的决定，将由法院执行。但是，商事仲裁使各国陷入两难境地：对仲裁的支持有助于商业界，使法院能够将其有限的资源转向其他领域，但仲裁的私密性和保密性实际上使企业能够在国家的支持下自主开展法律程序，但最终不受国家的控制。商事仲裁在当代争议解决中占有中心地位，被用于解决大量大小争议。2013年，国际商会国际仲裁院收到767份启动仲裁请求，伦敦国际仲裁院收到301份，斯德哥尔摩商会收到203份，德国仲裁学会收到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起案件涉及价值超过100万美元的纠纷，277起案件涉及价值超过1000万美元的纠纷，63起案件涉及价值超过1亿美元的纠纷。然而，这些数字仅代表每年发生的仲裁的一小部分，欧洲有更多的仲裁机构在运作，而且大量的仲裁是在没有机构参与的情况下发生的。然而，尽管商事仲裁在实现民事司法方面发挥了突出作用，但仲裁员的实际做法、该领域的职业发展机制以及仲裁提供的司法性质仍然被密封在所谓的“黑匣子”中。这是因为对仲裁的研究受制于大多数仲裁程序和裁决的保密性，以及在一个异质、多孔、跨国且众所周知难以渗透的专业群体中收集可靠的实证数据的困难。通过一种创新的三角方法，这个项目将打开这个“盒子”。商事仲裁依赖于一个基于三大支柱的制度结构：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、象征秩序）。既然仲裁作为一种争议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。这个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，从而影响仲裁作为一种执行民事司法的机制的功能。这样做将达到三个目的。首先，通过加强对商事仲裁作为一个专业实践领域所发挥作用的过程的了解，将有可能采取更有效的办法将商事仲裁纳入民事司法制度。第二，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的实践标准的影响。最后，它将对定性社会科学研究的方法论发展做出重大贡献。商事仲裁是欧洲各国政府和民间社会持续关注的一个领域，但由于该领域的机密性占主导地位，人们对商事仲裁的了解仍然很少。该项目将利用首席研究员在仲裁从业者中的认可，以及跨学科研究团队的专业知识范围，以清楚地了解这一重要但有争议的民事司法领域。

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.