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Arbitrability Trouble, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

The general notion of arbitrability is practically as old as arbitration itself, and yet it remains profoundly misunderstood, at least in U.S. arbitration law. For many – particularly outside the United States – arbitrability has a single and very precise meaning, signifying the legal capacity of a claim or dispute to be the subject of arbitration rather than litigation or, to borrow the language of the UNCITRAL Model Law and the New York Convention, signifying that a claim or dispute is “legally capable of being arbitrated.” By this understanding, a claim or dispute is “non-arbitrable” within a given legal system …