2011 vol. IV

The Holy Grail of International Commercial Arbitration Law is trust. In order for ICA to succeed, credibility built upon trust in the justice, fairness, and effectiveness of the proceedings is necessary. This means that the pillars upon which ICA law rests: justice, fairness, and effectiveness, form a foundation that make it final and enforceable. Without these pillars it becomes a house of cards rather than the Grail Castle that holds the Holy Chalice of dispute resolution. A successful arbitration proceeding is a fair ‘trial’, presided over by impartial arbitrators who hold the Scales of Justice, blindly balancing the merits of the State on the one hand and the merits of the investor on the other, to reach a just, fair and final decision; a decision that is honoured and upheld as a sacred and holy trust by national judges. Contested awards would ideally never appear before a judge in the first instance due to the following reasons: public policy, sovereign immunity, and the collection of sins which may fall under bad faith inter alia: fraud, partiality, and bias, and especially false allegations of bias or corruption against arbitrators to sabotage proceedings, do not have space to exist in the harmonious architecture of the Grail Castle.