Professor James R. Crawford, Judge at the International Court of Justice and Board member of TRAC, delivered the 2016 annual lecture of the Washington College of Law on September 28,2016 in Washington.

In his lecture “The Idea Arbitrator: Does One Size Fit All?”, Professor Crawford highlighted the importance of diversity of experience, background, specialization and stature when it comes to the “ideal arbitrator”. He focused his lecture on the expanded expectations of arbitrators in the fields of international commercial and investment treaty arbitration.

Professor Crawford acknowledged that the growth of investment treaty arbitration in recent decades has been met with a wave of critical commentary, calling into question not only arbitrators’ technical abilities, but also their ethics.

“There is no such thing as the ideal arbitrator,” Crawford concluded. The best-reasoned decisions he suggested would be conducted by a tribunal with arbitrators with a diversity of legal backgrounds and specialisations appropriate to the dispute.

For more information, please visit: https://www.wcl.american.edu/arbitration/