Arbitration

Arbitration, a form of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), is a technique for the resolution of disputes outside the courts. The parties to a dispute refer it to arbitration by one or more persons (the "arbitrators", "arbiters" or "arbitral tribunal"), and agree to be bound by the arbitration decision (the "award"). A third party reviews the evidence in the case and imposes a decision that is legally binding on both sides and enforceable in the courts.

Quotes

• The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role.
  • Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard (1997), Conclusion, p. 198.

• Our Nation has associated itself with other great powers for the purpose of promoting peace in the regions of the Pacific Ocean. It has steadily refused to accept the covenant of the League of Nations, but long before that was thought of, before the opening of the present century, we were foremost in promoting the calling of a conference at The Hague to provide for a tribunal of arbitration for the settlement of international disputes. We have made many treaties on that basis with other nations.
  • Calvin Coolidge, Freedom and its Obligations (1924).

• All Wars are Follies, very expensive, and very mischievous ones. When will Mankind be convinced of this, and agree to settle their Differences by Arbitration? Were they to do it, even by the Cast of a Dye, it would be better than by Fighting and destroying each other.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Mary Hewson (27 January 1783).

• Wars will remain while human nature remains. I believe in my soul in cooperation, in arbitration; but the soldier’s occupation we cannot say is gone until human nature is gone.
  • Rutherford B. Hayes, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926), Diary (11 August 1890).

• Libertarianism is a people's movement and a liberation movement. It seeks the sort of open, non-coercive society in which the people, the living, free, distinct people may voluntarily associate, dis-associate, and, as they see fit, participate in the decisions affecting their lives. This means a truly free market in everything from ideas to idiosyncrasies. It means people free collectively to organize the resources of their immediate community or individualistically to organize them; it means the freedom to have a community-based and supported judiciary where wanted, none where not, or private arbitration services where that is seen as most desirable.
  • Karl Hess, "Letter From Washington," The Libertarian Forum 1, no. 6 (15 June 1969), p. 2.

• Un jour viendra où il n'y aura plus d'autres champs de bataille que les marchés s'ouvrant au commerce et les esprits s'ouvrant aux idées. Un jour viendra où les boulets et les bombes seront remplacés par les votes, par le suffrage universel des peuples, par le vénérable arbitrage d'un grand sénat souverain qui sera à l'Europe ce que le parlement est à l'Angleterre, ce que la diète est à l'Allemagne, ce que l'assemblée législative est à la France!
  • A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas. A day will come when the bullets and bombs are replaced by votes, by universal suffrage, by the venerable arbitration of a great supreme senate which will be to Europe what Parliament is to England, the Diet to Germany, and the Legislative Assembly to France.
  • Victor Hugo, Discours d'ouverture, congrès de la paix, [Opening address, Peace Congress], Paris (21 August 1849); published in Actes et paroles - Avant l'exil (1875).

• Many cases occur, in which it is perfectly clear, that by means of a reference to arbitration, the real interests of the parties will be much better satisfied than they could be by any litigation in a Court of justice.
  • Lord Langdate, M.R., The Earl of Mexborough v. Bower (1843), 7 Beav. 132.

• He laboured to promote international arbitration.
  • Line in the Epitaph on the Owen Memorial (for Robert Owen) in Kensal Green Cemetery, London, England.

• We must not have a Nuclear war. We must begin to solve international disputes by the application of man's power of reason in a way that is worthy of the dignity of man. We must solve them by arbitration, negotiation, and the development of international law, the making of international agreements that will do justice to all nations and to all peoples and will benefit all nations and to all people. Now is the time to start.
  • Linus Pauling, debating Edward Teller, in The Nuclear Bomb Tests...Is Fallout Overrated? : Fallout and Disarmament KQED-TV, San Francisco (20 February 1958).

• Final-offer arbitration should have great appeal for the daring (the risk seekers) who play against the timid (the risk avoiders).
  • Howard Raiffa, The Art and Science of Negotiation (1982), Part II, Chapter 8, Third Party Intervention, p. 118.

• We should begin in our own environment and in our own community as far as possible to build a peace-loving attitude and learn to discipline ourselves to accept, in the small things of our lives, mediation and arbitration.
  • Eleanor Roosevelt, My Day (20 December 1961).

• All really civilized communities should have effective arbitration treaties among themselves. I believe that these treaties can cover almost all questions liable to arise between such nations, if they are drawn with the explicit agreement that each contracting party will respect the others territory and its absolute sovereignty within that territory, and the equally explicit agreement that (aside from the very rare cases where the nation's honor is vitally concerned) all other possible subjects of controversy will be submitted to arbitration. Such a treaty would insure peace unless one party deliberately violated it. Of course, as yet there is no adequate safeguard against such deliberate violation, but the establishment of a sufficient number of these treaties would go a long way towards creating a world opinion which would finally find expression in the provision of methods to forbid or punish any such violation.
  • Theodore Roosevelt, Nobel Lecture (1910).

• For 20 years past, either as Heir Apparent, Regent of the Empire, or as Emperor, I have never ceased to use all my efforts to bring my country the benefits of civilization, and in particular to establish relations of good neighbourliness with adjacent powers. In particular I succeeded in concluding with Italy the Treaty of Friendship of 1928, which absolutely prohibited the resort, under any pretext whatsoever, to force of arms, substituting for force and pressure the conciliation and arbitration on which civilized nations have based international order.
  • Haile Selassie, Address to the League of Nations (1936).

• The development of the doctrine of international arbitration, considered from the standpoint of its ultimate benefits to the human race, is the most vital movement of modern times. In its relation to the well-being of the men and women of this and ensuing generations, it exceeds in importance the proper solution of various economic problems which are constant themes of legislative discussion or enactment.
  • William Howard Taft, Dawn of World Peace, in U.S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, No. 8. (1912).

• In my middle-class teen-age world, the whole apparatus of going steady, exchanging ID bracelets, smooching at dances, fighting, breaking up, submitting to the arbitration of friends — that was the point, the public drama.
  • Edmund White, "My Women," The New Yorker (June 6, 2005).