ALI executive council approves draft of chapter 5 in Restatement on international arbitration

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – The executive council of the American Law Institute (ALI) approved chapter 5 of the Restatement, Third, of the U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration at its meeting in Philadelphia on Jan. 20. The chapter will now be presented for discussion and approval before the general ALI membership at the organization’s annual meeting in May.

Penn State Law professor Catherine Rogers is one of four reporters for the international arbitration Restatement and has been working on the project for approximately nine years. The ALI membership has already approved chapters 2 and 4 and a portion of chapter 1 of the Restatement.

Restatements are a revered feature in U.S. law. The ALI selects areas of law that are distilled or “restated” by leading scholars to provide guidance to courts and practitioners in the relevant field. In form, a Restatement is a series of “black letter” rules and related commentary with “Reporters’ Notes” that explain and analyze the underlying case law. In making a Restatement, selected legal scholars, called reporters, produce a draft, which is then extensively vetted by a range of carefully selected advisers and consultants and ultimately approved through ALI processes, including the Council and full membership.

Chapter 5 of the international arbitration Restatement focuses on investment arbitration, specifically the role of U.S. courts when an investment arbitration case comes before a court, for example, for enforcement of an arbitration agreement or an arbitral award.

Penn State Law students have worked actively with Rogers in finalizing this draft and continue to work with her to complete chapter 3, which deals with the judicial role during arbitral proceedings.

Rogers, the Paul and Marjorie Price Faculty Scholar at Penn State Law, 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 the founder of Arbitrator Intelligence, an NGO that aims to increase fairness, transparency, and accountability in the arbitrator selection process, and increased diversity in arbitrator appointments.