Appeal in International Arbitration: an efficient and affordable arbitral appeal mechanism

This article argues that international arbitral awards should be subject to arbitral appeals. It reviews the history of arbitration and its feature of finality of the awards. Then it critically examines the various arguments on the question of whether such awards should be subject to appeal. It argues that although the tendency of limiting the ability of a dissatisfied party to appeal to national courts is essential to international arbitration, arbitration institutions should propose arbitral appeal services. This would balance between the right of appeal, which is an element of access to justice, on the one hand, and party’s autonomy to finalize the dispute without the possibility to appeal to court, on the other hand. Therefore, the paper suggests that the arbitral appeal services should be built on an opt-out arbitration appeal mechanism. Finally, the different existing arbitral appeal mechanisms are examined and an efficient and affordable model of arbitral appeal is suggested.