PhD defence
The Arbitrator’s Role as a Settlement Facilitator in International Commercial Arbitration
- C. Wahby
- Date
- Tuesday 4 November 2025
- Time
- Location
-
Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden
Supervisor(s)
Summary
This book offers a comprehensive and systematic exploration of the arbitrator’s role as a settlement facilitator in international commercial arbitration (ICA) - a development that has gained increasing recognition in recent years yet remains underexamined and unevenly regulated.
Set against the backdrop of global shifts in dispute resolution, the book addresses growing concerns about the procedural formalism and rising costs of ICA. It critically examines the evolution of the arbitrator’s dual function, whereby facilitation of settlement complements the adjudicative role, and investigates how this function is implemented within both standalone arbitrations and hybrid arbitration-mediation frameworks.
Through a detailed comparative analysis, the book surveys the legal treatment of this role across diverse jurisdictions and legal traditions, highlighting common principles, divergences, and emerging transnational patterns. It further analyzes institutional rules, domestic legislation, and normative instruments that support or constrain this role, and assesses their coherence and effectiveness.
In addition to offering a structured typology of facilitation methods, the book identifies procedural risks and normative gaps, and proposes safeguards to ensure legal certainty and enforceability. This work contributes to the ongoing discourse on the harmonization of international arbitration and the development of transnational standards for the arbitrator’s settlement-facilitation role.
PhD dissertations
Approximately one week after the defence, PhD dissertations by Leiden PhD students are available digitally through the Leiden Repository, that offers free access to these PhD dissertations. Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later.
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