The confidentiality of international arbitration proceedings and awards is one area with a crying need for corrective hands today. The conflicting needs of confidentiality and transparency in arbitration have compelled badly the courts and lawmakers to come with the innovations to harmonize the conflict. The road of confidentiality in international arbitration meets a dead end after crossing the barrier of ‘privacy’ as no national or institutional laws provide expressly for confidentiality (barring few exceptions like New Zealand) because of its inherent complications. This paper attempts to strike a balance between virtue and vice of confidentiality in the area of arbitration.

The confidentiality of international arbitration proceedings and awards is one area with a crying need for corrective hands today. There was a time when most participants of an arbitration proceeding simply assumed that they were forbidden to disclose what went on within the four walls of a private commercial arbitration. But making such an assumption would be foolhardy today when the scope of arbitral confidentiality is “far from a settled issue.”1 The conflicting needs of confidentiality and transparency in arbitration have compelled badly the courts and lawmakers to come up with innovations to harmonize the conflict. The road of confidentiality in international arbitrations meets a dead end after crossing the barrier of ‘privacy’ as no national or institutional laws provide expressly for confidentiality (barring a few exceptions like New Zealand) because of its inherent complications. This paper attempts to strike a balance between the virtue and vice of confidentiality in the area of arbitration.

The three main participants of arbitration proceeding are parties of the proceeding, arbitrator, and the third party (such as expert witness) and are bound by the duty of confidentiality in an arbitration proceeding. It is suggested that the arbitrator has an ethical duty to confidentiality (See e.g., Sec. 9 of International Bar Association – Ethics of Arbitrator). But the third parties such as the expert witness may not be bound by the duty of confidentiality in case of any agreement to the contrary. The duties of the parties may also change subject to the laws applicable to the tribunal and jurisdiction. Confidentiality is cited as one of the main advantages in the area of international arbitration.

Law Review Journal, Judiciary, Confidentiality, International Commercial Arbitration, Presumption, Reality, International Bar Association, Ethics of Arbitrator, Confidentiality, Party Autonomy, New York Conventions.