Originally from Reflections on International Arbitration - Essays in Honour of Professor George Bermann

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Well over a decade ago, I had the good fortune to be asked to serve as an Advisor to the ALI Restatement project on International Commercial Arbitration. And while this had the welcome result of adding an impressive item to my CV, it led in an even more agreeable fashion to allow me to come to know George Bermann. Both at the ALI and other fora, there have been countless hours of always-animated yet always-companionable talk: Clearly George and I share, with a few similarly-afflicted individuals, the sheer excitement of reveling in this endlessly fascinating subject, and the pleasure in seeing how it calls on the very best of our analytical abilities.

The Restatement, so much a product of George’s guiding vision, treads deftly between all the competing vectors,

• navigating between, on the one hand, the constraints of an antique statute, the necessary deference to ill-considered lower-court precedent—and to the often-sibylline pronouncements of the Supreme Court (crying out not to be taken literally), 

• and on the other, the charge to formulate the “better rule” most congruent with “international best practice.”

• And all of this has played out in the service of an overarching desire to bridge the sometimes-disconcerting gap between American political and legal culture, and the different preconcep¬tions of more-sophisticated legal systems.

This was by no means an easy task.  But it is one that the drafters undertook with immense learning and cheerfulness and good sense. While I have occasionally in my work indulged in some cavils,  nothing I have said anywhere detracts from my great admiration of the finished product.