Dealing in Virtue: International Commercial Arbitration and the Construction of a Transnational Legal Order

In recent years, international business disputes have increasingly been resolved through private arbitration. This pathbreaking book reveals for the first time how an elite, transnational legal profession has emerged over the last three decades and engaged in the construction of an autonomous legal field that is central to the global marketplace. Building on the structural approach of Pierre Bourdieu, Yves Dezalay and Bryant G. Garth show how an informal, settlement-oriented system dominated by Continental academics became formalized, litigious, and expensive. They also reveal a more personal but integral aspect of this new legal field - the intense personal competition and fascinating hierarchies among arbitrators seeking the international reputations for virtue that will lead to selection for arbitration panels. Since arbitration fees in many cases reach hundreds of thousands of dollars, this, too, is very much a high-stakes game. With examples from England, the United States, Sweden, Egypt, Hong Kong, and many other countries, Dezalay and Garth explore how international developments in turn transform domestic methods for handling disputes. Finally, they analyze the changing prospects for international business dispute resolution given the growing presence of international market and regulatory institutions such as the EEC, NAFTA, and the World Trade Organization.