Arbitration Hearing with Remote Participation: Necessary Innovations that Irreversibly Change Traditions

The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic forced most arbitration centers in countries with a wide variety of legal traditions to switch to mass arbitration hearings in video conferencing mode in the spring of 2020. It turned out that hearings with remote participation of representatives of the parties, and sometimes arbitrators, have a number of advantages compared to regular hearings. A number of new possibilities arises and thus compensates the loss of certain possibilities adherent in physical presence of arbitration participants at hearings. The authors argue that most of the obstacles and shortcomings of the new format as a whole can be overcome with modern regulatory development, law enforcement, software, and hardware tools. The paper examines, among other things, the experience of the Arbitration Center at the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, whose software and hardware complex and previously modernized arbitration rules made it possible to safely switch to a new mode of operation. New documents of international origin in this area are also being considered, indicating the need to ensure a balance between the effectiveness of arbitration proceedings on the one hand and the right of the parties to due process and fair treatment on the other.

The authors conclude that there will not be a complete return to the previous practice with the end of the pandemic. However, a certain part of the meetings, taking into account the circumstances of the disputes, will return offline, the popularity of various mixed (hybrid) options will increase, which will not be difficult to put into practice due to the flexibility of the arbitration procedure. The flexibility of arbitration and the delegation to arbitrators of a number of issues related to the organization and conduct of arbitration proceedings, which require that opinions of the parties should be requested and considered in order to solve the dispute, makes it possible to ensure the optimal “format” of the arbitration procedure given the specific circumstances of the dispute. This procedure provides its participants, among other things, a reasonable and sufficient opportunity to present their positions, ensuring equal treatment of the parties and adversarial while ensuring the real effectiveness of the arbitration procedure, which allows in modern conditions to properly implement the principles on which arbitration is based.

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