The selection of the arbitral tribunal is likely the most critical step in the arbitral process.Arbitrators adjudicate substantive and procedural issues, and the quality of the arbitrators will be outcome determinative of the parties’ dispute and, ultimately, the enforceability of the arbitral award.This chapter provides guidance on best practices regarding the appointment of arbitrators in international commercial and investor-State arbitration.It discusses the parameters of the parties’ flexibility and autonomy in choosing the configuration of their tribunal and the identity of their arbitrators, as well as the various factors that parties should consider in vetting potential arbitrator candidates.This chapter also addresses strategic considerations, procedures, and practical concerns of arbitrator challenges, including the potential implications of successful challenges.

Any assessment of the international investment regime and its legitimacy crisis requires a preliminary understanding of their important and relevant features. However, the sprawling nature of both defies most doctrinal and qualitative attempts at description. The regime is based on a decentralized network of legal instruments, different procedural mechanisms and ad hoc proceedings, while the accompanying chorus of critique and counter-critique is populated with multiple actors and interests across the world. This chapter seeks to capture this distinct and fragmented universe. First, the authors map consent to arbitration, not on a generic per signed bilateral investment treaty basis, but rather by tracking multilateral, bilateral and unilateral consents in force. Second, they provide a description and overview of the over 1,100 registered cases up to January 2020, focusing inter alia on case outcomes, rules, cases types, institution, parties, economic sector and legal basis. Third, they trace discontent with regime, charting the origin of legitimacy crisis and its maturing over time. It ends by discussing both state-led efforts at reform and the extent to which arbitrators themselves have adjusted reflexively to the backlash.

When the total or partial non-observance of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial, established in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the relevant international instruments accepted by the States concerned, is of such gravity as to give the deprivation of liberty an arbitrary character (category III);1