About the Program
International arbitration is today a flourishing legal practice area posing diverse and unique challenges to legal practitioners all over the world and has become the recognized dispute resolution method for the international business and economic fields. The widespread use of arbitration in bilateral investment treaties accentuates its role in the resolution of semi-public international disputes involving private and state parties.
Arbitral decisions often have a macroeconomic impact with wide-ranging national and international repercussions, and are undoubtedly influencing the fashioning of the law.
Specifically, arbitration impacts inter alia, trade, transfrontier capital, knowledge, goods, natural resources and technological flows, and international relations at large. This phenomenon, in continuous evolution, is necessarily and incessantly raising novel legal questions that need comprehensive consideration in order to address their practical and theoretical implications.
The International Arbitration Program was developed at American University Washington College of Law with the purpose of analyzing the practical and theoretical issues surrounding the development of international commercial arbitration and contributing to the task of better understanding this phenomenon. The Program prepares the legal profession to face these new challenges through the following initiatives:
By offering courses, seminars for practitioners, and workshops taught by leading practitioners in the field, aimed at providing insights of the practice of international arbitration and the handling of arbitration cases;
Through courses for credit offered annually as part of the International Arbitration Summer Session, whose faculty will focus each year on different theoretical and practical aspects of international arbitration;
By organizing workshops and colloquia with the participation of leading practitioners and international law experts for the purpose of assessing the formation of international procedural and substantive law and rules through arbitral determinations or awards. These meetings will permit in-depth discussions of such issues as; the rules governing the merits of arbitral disputes, the ethics and morality to be observed in the handling of arbitration cases, the recognition and exercise of human rights in arbitration, and the evolution and fashioning of international, comparative and national law.
Created under the direction of Dr. Horacio A. Grigera Naón, former Secretary General of the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce, the Program builds on American University Washington College of Law's commitment to building a world community by identifying transnational legal issues and addressing these issues through the expertise of our accomplished full and part-time faculty, alumni and practitioners.
