Professor Rogers talks Arbitrator Intelligence at New York International Arbitration Center and Harvard

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. --  Catherine A. Rogers, professor of law and the Marjorie Price Faculty Scholar at Penn State Law, delivered two talks last week on Arbitrator Intelligence.

She spoke at the New York International Arbitration Center on Nov. 1 during “NYIAC Talks: Fresh Ideas, Urgent Concerns.” On a panel regarding addressing the current state of artificial intelligence and new technological frontiers, Rogers joined Nik Reed, COO and co-founder of Ravel Law in discussing analytics on judges and arbitrators, as well as senior in-house counsel for Nokia, Elaine Drager. Discussion centered around the newest innovations in litigation, and the challenges for converting those to an arbitration context. The panel was moderated by Daniel Schimmel, partner at Foley Hoag.

On Nov. 2, she spoke at Harvard Law School with Jose Maria de la Jara, a country team leader for Arbitrator Intelligence’s Latin American Campaign, on “Arbitrator Intelligence and the Fight for Transparency, Diversity and Accountability.”  Rogers and de la Jara made the case for how increased transparency can counter corruption in national courts and strengthen international arbitration. They also presented preliminary results from the Arbitrator Intelligence Latin American Campaign.

Founded by Rogers in 2014, Arbitrator Intelligence is a Penn State-related entity that aims to promote fairness, transparency, and accountability in the arbitrator selection process, and to facilitate increased diversity in arbitrator appointments. Arbitrator Intelligence invites parties and counsel at the conclusion of arbitration cases to complete the Arbitrator Intelligence Questionnaire to solicit feedback on how the arbitrators managed and decided the cases. The questionnaire is designed to replicate, through this feedback data, the kinds of information about arbitrators’ case management and decisional history that is currently gathered through ad hoc person-to-person phone calls. When sufficient information is collected, Arbitrator Intelligence will make it available to the international arbitration community through “AI Reports.”

In addition to her position at Penn State Law, Rogers serves as professor of ethics, regulation & the rule of law and director of the Institute for Ethics, Regulation & the Rule of Law at Queen Mary University of London. She is co-chair of the ICCA-Queen Mary Task Force on Third-Party Funding in International Arbitration, which was released in April, and a reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law, the U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration.