Scrutiny of Arbitral Awards by Arbitration Institutions in International Arbitration: Focusing on the ICC’s Scrutiny of Award Process

International arbitration has been increasingly successful in providing not only an alternate but also an appropriate and relevant dispute resolution mechanism for parties in different parts of the world so that they would not have to appear before foreign national courts. The objective of all arbitration proceedings is a final and enforceable award by a competent and independent arbitral tribunal. Arbitration rules of certain well-renowned international arbitration institutions, namely the ICC, mandate that arbitral tribunals submit drafts of their awards to the respective institution for institutional scrutiny of arbitral awards before the final award is signed by the tribunal and issued to the parties. While not all the arbitration rules set forth award scrutiny provisions, it is unclear whether such silence in the rules necessarily indicates no scrutiny is done by the institution. This paper examines the ICC draft award scrutiny process in order to determine the pros and cons of the process and raises some issues to be considered for other institutions that may be interested in adopting award scrutiny process as well.