Marcella Zarouk
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Katherine Simpson
Co-Presenter: Goodman, Abigail
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Simpson Dispute Resolution / NonUM
Presentation Date: April 20
Presentation Type: Oral5
Session: Session 4 – 2:40pm – 3:30 pm
Room: Breakout room 1
Authors: Katherine Simpson, Abigail Goodman, Marcella Zarouk
Presenter: 2
Abstract
Despite the far-reaching implications that legal decisions in international arbitration can have on the relationship between government and foreign companies, little is known about how arbitrators’ personal backgrounds affect their decision-making. Our project fills in that gap by studying the correlation between arbitrators’ backgrounds, their gender, nationality, age, education, and professional experience with their legal philosophies and predilections in decision-making. We collected information on 593 arbitrators from the ICSID (International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes) website: the world’s leading database for international investment dispute settlement. There, we compiled the arbitrators’ CVs, containing their personal and professional resumes. Then, we began coding a dataset containing the over 700 concluded cases registered with ICSID. Our dataset will contain information like parties, law firms, experts, type of dispute, length, bifurcation, and publication of the award. From there, we are able to discern trends in the field of international arbitration. For example, we will be able to identify and assess trends in the age of arbitrators when they are first appointed (are arbitrators getting younger or older)? Additionally, we will be able to test whether gender diversity among arbitrators is changing. We will even be able to assess the impact that the top 5 women in the field, who together make up more than 40% of all female appointments to ICSID cases, have had. With these two datasets, we can make relevant conclusions about the field of international arbitration.
Arts and Humanities
