The “black box” of international commercial arbitration might be giving up some of its secrets soon, and Queen’s Law professor Joshua Karton will be part of the team getting a peek inside.

Arbitration is an increasingly important means for resolving cross-border commercial disputes, but it remains mysterious. The process is often compared to a black box because the decisions of international arbitral tribunals are nearly always kept confidential—even the mere existence of a dispute is usually secret. “A dispute goes in, a decision comes out, and no one really knows what happens in between” observes Professor Karton, Queen’s Law Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research, who specializes in international commercial law and dispute resolution.

Karton is a part of an international research team awarded a grant worth 1.1 million pounds over five years from the UK Economic and Social Research Council, to study how European arbitrators actually make decisions in cross-border commercial disputes. Led by Dr Tony Cole of the University of Leicester in the UK, the ten-member team includes not just lawyers but also sociologists and psychologists. Professor Karton is the only team member from North America. He brings to the team not only his knowledge of international arbitration law and practice, but also experience conducting interview-based studies of international arbitrators, experience he gained researching his 2013 book, The Culture of International Arbitration and the Evolution of Contract Law.

Grants of this size are rare in legal research, especially for a niche topic like international commercial arbitration. The money will make possible a study of unprecedented size and scope: 400 on-location interviews and focus groups in 130 locations across Europe and Central Asia.  The goal? A full picture of how international arbitrators actually make decisions across legal, sociological, and psychological dimensions: how factors like arbitrator diversity, market incentives, intra-tribunal dynamics, and social networks shape the delivery of commercial justice in Europe. Says Professor Karton, “International arbitration researchers may not get a grant of this size again for a long time. This project is an exciting and possibly unique opportunity to do ground-breaking work on an important but poorly-understood field.”

- Jenna Rumeo