The proposal at hand would facilitate the ability of willing entities to commit disputes to arbitration. Arbitration is the formalised process of putting the dispute to a trusted third party and asking them to decide. This is generally significantly faster than a court and is predicated on mutual assent. Arbitration has the additional benefit of not having to disclose trade secrets in an open arena, which protects against intellectual property theft and maintains confidentiality.

Regardless, in arbitration, there normally is a losing party, unless the dispute is resolved by mutual assent. For arbitration to be meaningful in international transactions, where it has substantial benefits due to differences in law and particularities of judicial process that make it easier for everyone to transact, it must be enforced on the losing party. Without enforcement, nobody has an incentive to use arbitration. Creating legislative recognition of the awards to the winning parties therefore helps to secure access for member nations to each others' markets, yielding substantial gains from trade.

Section 4 of the legislation provides a number of exceptions to arbitral awards: illegality, unfair process, irrelevance, etc are important exceptions that preserve the efficacy of national laws. Furthermore, its application only to member nations and in international contracts helps to limit both any unnecessary expenditure of WA resources and any micromanagement.

We therefore recommend a vote FOR "Commercial Arbitration Recognition".

Primary author(s): Imperium Anglorum.