The Coming Crisis in the Global Adjudication System

Abstract

IT IS necessary, first, to define the ‘global adjudication system’ in which incipient crisis is perceived. Only then does one address that crisis, and begin to consider whether the title of this article should be punctuated by an exclamation mark, a question mark or an ellipsis. Following that, it falls to consider possible solutions, if any, to the crisis. The global adjudication system is the legal framework within which international investment and other commercial disputes are resolved by binding and final arbitration, as regulated, however, by national legislation and judiciaries; the two components of the system being linked through international agreements, principally the New York Convention.1 As is by now conventional wisdom, this system has greatly expanded in the past decade, thanks in part to the roughly 2,000 bilateral investment treaties now in force around the world,2 as well as some multilateral investment treaties,...