Presentations

Across the world, users of state court litigation and of arbitration are increasingly complaining about classic instruments of dispute resolution becoming too costly and too time consuming. While the primary mission of courts and arbitral tribunals is rendering a judgment or an arbitral award, the idea of having them assist the parties in reaching an amicable settlement is gaining ground: From calls for more pro-active judges and arbitrators, initiatives in the US for mid-stream conferences, a recently published ICC task force report on settlements in arbitration, another similar report of the German Arbitration Institute on the same topic, up to the Rules for the Facilitation of Settlement in International Arbitration of the London-based Center For Effective Dispute Resolution – early dispute resolution assistance has become the talk of the town. This session will explore whether and how this trend can be put into practice without infringing the due process rules and whether it can contribute to restoring time and cost efficiency of classic dispute resolution assistance.