The Legitimacy of Optional Appellate Arbitration

Procedural flexibility and party autonomy are fundamental to arbitral proceedings. The parties should be able to avail themselves to a substantial review of their arbitral award by an appellate arbitration, upon parties’ agreement. With appellate arbitration, most of the advantageous features of arbitral process, such as finality and enforceability of arbitral awards, ability to select decision makers of the parties’ disputes, flexibility and confidentiality in proceedings, would still hold true even despite the potential for increased time and costs. The more significant potential for an enhanced legitimacy and correctness of arbitral awards would ultimately lead to greater satisfaction of the users of arbitration and greater confidence in the arbitral process. In this article, the author argues in support of appellate arbitrations on an opt-in basis(by party agreement), discusses the currently available optional appellate arbitral procedures of some of the major arbitral institutions in the United States, and finally, makes suggestions as to optimal appellate arbitral procedures, in the hopes of making arbitration more of a truly alternative dispute resolution mechanism.