Party Autonomy and Default Rules regarding the Choice of Number of Arbitrators
![handle is hein.journals/cardcore22 and id is 39 raw text is: PARTY AUTONOMY AND DEFAULT RULES
REGARDING THE CHOICE OF NUMBER
OF ARBITRATORS
Ilias Bantekas*
I. INTRODUCTION
It would have been futile if the law-whether the law of the
seat or institutional rules-rendered the selection of the number of
arbitrators a matter of compulsion on the parties. The parties to
international arbitration are presumed to understand which num-
ber suits their particular needs, for the purposes of amassing suffi-
cient expertise for the exigencies of their dispute. Moreover, given
that the appointment of arbitrators gives rise to significant expen-
diture, arbitral proceedings would be out of the parties' control if
the state dictated the appropriate number of arbitrators. Even so,
it is not always clear how many arbitrators the parties have chosen,
or that in the event of multi-party arbitration each party is entitled
to select one arbitrator. Hence, default rules are important in or-
der for arbitral proceedings to continue unabated, as well as to
avoid rendering arbitration too expensive or too onerous for one
or more parties. Although there is some divergence among states
as to whether or not the parties may appoint an even or odd num-
ber of arbitrators, the general positions on party autonomy and its
default counterpart are generally not contentious. These have
been expressed in the two key international arbitration instru-
ments: Article 10 of the United Nations Convention on Interna-
tional Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law on International
Commercial Arbitration and Article 7 of the UNCITRAL Arbitra-
tion Rules.1 The former contemplates that: (i) The parties are
free to determine the number of arbitrators[.] (ii) [F]ailing such
determination, the number of arbitrators shall be three.2
Article 10 sets out the principle that the choice as to the num-
ber of arbitrators rests with the parties to the disputes first and
* Professor of International Law and Arbitration, Hamad bin Khalifa University (Qatar
Foundation) College of Law and Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown University, Edmund A.
Walsh School of Foreign Service.
1 U.N. COMM. ON INT'L TRADE L., UNCITRAL MoDEIL LAW ON INTERNATIONAL COM-
MERCIAL ARBITRATION, U.N. Sales No. E.08.V4 (2008) [hereinafter UNCITRAL].
2 Id. at art. X.
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Party Autonomy and Default Rules regarding the Choice of Number of Arbitrators
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