TADS LLM Commencement Address by Mohamed Shelbaya, founding partner of Gaillard Banifatemi Shelbaya Disputes.

As a developing form of adjudication, international arbitration has raced through its infancy and adolescence in the twentieth century, oscillating between excessive protectionism during its infancy and a misconception of liberalism during its adolescence that led some users and States to question its very legitimacy. Over the last decade or so, we are witnessing signals that arbitration, be it commercial or investment, is finding its balance. The evolution of the standards of assessment of corruption and of the accepted approach to the “proper application” of the applicable law in commercial arbitration, coincided with a new approach to the drafting and interpretation of investment treaties; with the system of international arbitration in each case seeking to find a balance that is less ideological as had been the case in past decades. The address will focus on these signals, that are by no means uniformly accepted but that nonetheless remain statistically significant, and the practical context that led to them.