Originally from Between East and West: Essays in Honour of Ulf Franke

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It is only fitting that an article for a book to honor Ulf Franke should be about Institutional Arbitration seen from the inside. Ably leading the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce for so many years may have been his formal work, yet his contributions to the arbitration world and to institutional arbitration go much further. Until May of this year Ulf Franke led the International Federation of Commercial Arbitration Institutions (IFCAI) for eight years, making a big effort to contribute to the well-being of institutional arbitration throughout the world. He was also the Secretary General of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration for quite some time. We don’t need to see his resume in order to know he has been one of the inspiring people that have been making arbitration an interesting, challenging, and rewarding area to practice. His example as the leader of an institution has served many of us well. For those of us who have had the honor of sharing his experience, it is doubtless that his contribution to the arbitration world has been a steady flow of work from which we have much benefited.

Thus this article is dedicated to institutional arbitration, why it has become an important factor in the development of arbitration and what lies within the walls of institutions that manage cases. There is a triangle of participants in an institutional arbitration, one corner serving the parties and their lawyers (we call them the clients), next comes the members of the tribunal, and the third angle belongs to the institution. This is written from the point of view of the institution—hence the title, Institutional Arbitration from the Inside.

We should start by asking ourselves: What exactly is institutional arbitration? A whole book could be written about institutional arbitration and how it has developed. In this case we will narrow down to what we believe is of interest and that is the institutions that actually manage cases. We shall make the difference by labeling the arbitration institutions those who have within their functions that of managing cases. That would set us apart from the institutions that either promote, study, or in any way dedicate themselves to the arbitration theme but do not manage arbitral tribunals and do not offer arbitration services. The latter would then be called organizations dedicated to arbitration.