Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T12:52:52.168Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Competition and Cooperation in International Commercial Arbitration: The Birth of a Transnational Legal Profession

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Florian Grisel
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper revisits the sociology of international commercial arbitration on the basis of unexploited archives and data. This material casts new light on the competition between “grand old men” and “young technocrats” in the 1980s and 1990s, a theme that has structured the analysis of international commercial arbitration since the pioneering work of Yves Dezalay and Bryant G. Garth (Dealing in Virtue). In contrast, the data show that the crucial transformative period actually took place between the 1950s and 1970s, when a relatively well-defined group of individuals emerged as the leading arbitrators at the International Chamber of Commerce. These individuals— the “secant marginals”—succeeded in constructing a cooperative interface (rather than competition) between otherwise separate legal systems and professions. In doing so, they created the conditions necessary for the emergence of a new transnational legal profession. At a more general level, the article proposes an alternative narrative of globalization, wherein actors operating at the intersection of various systems, create new arenas of governance on the basis of inter-system cooperation.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 790 - 824
Copyright
© 2017 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author would like to express his deep thanks to the editors and anonymous reviewers of the Law & Society Review who have offered valuable feedback on this article. The author is also deeply grateful for the extremely helpful guidance provided by Robert C. Ellickson, Maria Hauser, Jan Paulsson, Alec Stone Sweet, Albert Jan van den Berg, V.V. Veeder, and Patrick Weil.

References

Axelrod, Robert (1990) The Evolution of Co-Operation. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Bhatia, Vijay K. (2010) “Accessibility of Discoursal Data in Critical Genre Analysis: International Commercial Arbitration Practice,” 10 Linguagem em (Dis)curso 465–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhatia, Vijay K. (2011) “Interdiscursive Colonisation of Arbitration Practice,” 30 World Englishes 76–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhatia, Vijay K., Candlin, Christopher N., & Gotti, Maurizio, eds. (2012) Discourse and Practice in International Commercial Arbitration: Issues, Challenges and Prospects. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Beechey, John (1997) “Book Review of Dealing in Virtue,” 24 J. of Law & Society 569–73.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1984) Homo Academicus. Paris: Editions de Minuit.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1986) “La Force du Droit—Eléments Pour une Sociologie du Champ Juridique,” 64 Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 3–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1991) "On the Possibility of a Field of World Sociology,” in Bourdieu, P. & Coleman, J. S., eds., Social Theory for a Changing Society. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (2012) Sur l'Etat—Cours au Collège de France 1989–1992. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (with Wacquand, Loïc J.D.) (1992) Réponses—Pour une Anthropologie Réflexive. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Buchanan, Ruth (1997) “Constructing Virtual Justice in the Global Arena,” 31 Law & Society Rev. 363–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caron, David D., et al. eds. (2015) Practising Virtue—Inside International Arbitration. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carruthers, Bruce G. & Halliday, Terence C. (2006) “Negotiating Globalization: Global Scripts and Intermediation in the Construction of Asian Insolvency Regimes,” 31 Law & Social Inquiry 521–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crozier, Michel & Friedberg, Erhard (1977) L'acteur et le Système—Les Contraintes de L'action Collective. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Dezalay, Yves (1992) Marchands de Droit—La Restructuration de L'ordre Juridique International par les Multinationales du Droit. Paris: Fayard.Google Scholar
Dezalay, Yves & Garth, Bryant G. (1995) “Merchants of Law as Moral Entrepreneurs: Constructing International Justice from the Competition for Transnational Business Disputes,” 29 Law & Society Rev. 27–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dezalay, Yves & Garth, Bryant G. (1996) Dealing in Virtue—International Commercial Arbitration and the Construction of a Transnational Legal Order. Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dezalay, Yves & Garth, Bryant G. (forthcoming) "Constructing a Transatlantic Marketplace of Disputes on the Symbolic Foundations of International Justice,” in Mallard, G., et al., eds., Contracting beyond Boundaries: Private Regulation of International Trade and Finance in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Dezalay, Yves, Bigo, Didier, & Cohen, Antonin (2015) “Enquêter sur L'internationalisation des Noblesses d'Etat. Retour Réflexif sur des Stratégies de Double Jeu,” 98 Cultures Et Conflits 15–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dezalay, Yves & Madsen, Mikael Rask (2012) “The Force of Law and Lawyers: Pierre Bourdieu and the Reflexive Sociology of Law,” 8 Annual Rev. of Law and Social Science 433–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixit, Avinash K. (2004) Lawlessness and Economics—Alternative Modes of Governance. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Fligstein, Neil & McAdam, Doug (2012) A Theory of Fields. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franck, Susan D. (2006) “The Role of International Arbitrators,” 12 ILSA J. of International and Comparative Law 499–521.Google Scholar
Goldman, Berthold (1964) “Frontières du Droit et Lex Mercatoria,” 9 Archives de Philosophie du Droit 177–92.Google Scholar
Grisel, Florian, et al. (2016) “Aux Origines de L'arbitrage Commercial Contemporain: L’émergence de L'arbitrage CCI,” 2 Revue de L'arbitrage 403–44.Google Scholar
Hagan, John, Levi, Ron, & Ferrales, Gabrielle (2006) “Swaying the Hand of Justice: The Internal and External Dynamics of Regime Change at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,” 31 Law & Social Inquiry 585–616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Terence C. (2012) “Architects of the State: International Financial Institutions and the Reconstruction of States in East Asia,” 37 Law & Social Inquiry 265–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helmer, Elena V. (2003) “International Commercial Arbitration: Americanized, ‘Civilized,’ or Harmonized?,” 19 Ohio State J. on Dispute Resolution 35–67.Google Scholar
International Chamber of Commerce (1935) International Commercial Arbitration—Practical Hints. Paris: Lecram-Servant.Google Scholar
Jemielnak, Joanna (forthcoming) “Comparative Analysis as an Autonomization Strategy in International Commercial Arbitration,” International J. for the Semiotics of LawGoogle Scholar
Jessup, Philip C. (1956) Transnational Law. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Karton, Joshua (2013) The Culture of International Arbitration and the Evolution of Contract Law. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kauppi, Niilo & Madsen, Mikael Rask, eds. (2013) Transnational Power Elites–The New Professionals of Governance, Law and Security. London, UK: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lagergren, Gunnar & Aldrich, George H. (2002) “An Old Judge Remembers,” 14 Leiden J. of International Law 307–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Legrand, Pierre (2006) “On the Singularity of Law,” 47 Harvard International Law J. 518–30.Google Scholar
Lenoir, Rémi (2004a) "Espace Social et Classes Sociales,” in Pinto, L., et al., eds., Pierre Bourdieu, Sociologue. Paris: Fayard.Google Scholar
Lenoir, Rémi (2004b) "Du Droit au Champ Juridique,” in Pinto, L., et al., eds., Pierre Bourdieu, Sociologue. Paris: Fayard.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1962) La Pensée Sauvage. Paris: Plon.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle (2006) Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Munger, Frank (2012) “Globalization through the Lens of Palace Wars: What Elite Lawyers’ Careers Can and Cannot Tell Us about Globalization of Law,” 37 Law & Social Inquiry 476–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinto, Louis (2002) Pierre Bourdieu et la Théorie du Monde Social. Paris: Albin Michel.Google Scholar
Puig, Sergio (2014) “Social Capital in the Arbitration Market,” 25 The European J. of International Law 387–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sacriste, Guillaume & Vauchez, Antoine (2007) “The Force of International Law: Lawyers’ Diplomacy on the International Scene in the 1920s,” 32 Law & Social Inquiry 83–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schultz, Thomas & Kovacs, Robert (2012) “The Rise of a Third Generation of Arbitrators? Fifteen Years after Dezalay and Garth,” 28 Arbitration International 161–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, Eric A. (1997) “Book review of Dealing in Virtue,” 12 ICSID Rev. – Foreign Investment Law J. 229–35.Google Scholar
Stone Sweet, Alec & Grisel, Florian (2017) The Evolution of International Arbitration. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaffer, Gregory, Nedumpara, James, & Sinha, Aseema (2015) “State Transformation and the Role of Lawyers: The WTO, India, and Transnational Legal Ordering,” 49 Law & Society Rev. 595–629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarrius, Alain (2008) "Migration by the Poor and Economic Globalization: Transnational Migratory Flows in Southern Europe,” in Gabriel, C., et al., eds., Governing International Labour Migration—Current Issues, Challenges and Dilemmas. London: Routledge.Google Scholar