The Reasons Requirement in International Investment Arbitration: Critical Case Studies.

The Reasons Requirement in International Investment Arbitration: Critical Case Studies. Edited by Guillermo Aguilar Alvarez and W. Michael Reisman. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2008. Pp. v, 373. Index. $221, 157 [euro].

In the world of international arbitration, much is often at stake, and if one ends up on the losing side, one wants (!) to know the reasons why. Consequently, it is generally accepted that the private judges tasked with deciding these international legal disputes will provide written reasons purporting not just to announce, but to explain and justify, the result they have reached.

Even in ancient Greece, international arbitral awards "often contained the reasoning upon which" they were based, sometimes in great detail and sometimes including summaries of the underlying procedures. (1) In more modern times, arbitral statutes or institutional rules generally impose upon arbitrators an explicit duty to support their decisions with written reasons. For example, Article 31(2) of the 1985 UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration states that the "award shall state the reasons upon which it is based." Article 25 of the 1998 Interstate Commerce Commission rules contains similar language, as does Article 27 of the American Arbitration Association's internation...

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