We are pleased to announce a forthcoming Transnational Dispute Management (TDM, ISSN 1875-4120) special issue on “Non-Legal Adjudicators in National and International Disputes“. This special issue will analyse the current scenario, as well as new trends, developments, and challenges that non-legal adjudicators[1] face when resolving national and international disputes. It will consider litigation; national arbitration and diverse forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR); international commercial arbitration; investment arbitration; inter-State arbitration and the dispute settlement system of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
This special issue will be edited by Katia Fach Gómez (University of Zaragoza-Spain) and Weiwei Zhang(Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies – Switzerland).
National courts and arbitration tribunals very often need to address scientific and/or technical aspects of a dispute. Arbitrators may rely on external competences – e.g., party-appointed experts or ex curiaexperts. However, nowadays there are also various areas of conflict resolution in which non-legal experts are part of the adjudicatory body, and internally provide with the required non-legal competences.[2] In the national judicial context, there are examples of specialized national courts -e.g., in the environmental dispute sector- where non-legal experts guarantee the non-legal expertise of judicial courts. In the international arbitral context, a compelling example of the appointment a scientific-technical expert as full arbitrator is provided by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the inter-State Indus Waters Kishenganga case. Non-legal neutrals are likewise relevant in commercial arbitration and in the broader field of ADR. In specialized areas such as disputes regarding construction, energy, engineering, financial services, technology and applied science cases, resorting to non-lawyers to resolve these type of disputes is a widely-used practice. It is also very remarkable that in the WTO dispute settlement system, by end of 2014, 44% of the panellists appointed have no legal background and 3 out of the 25 Appellate Body members appointed so far have no law degree.[3]
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