The Confidentiality In International Commercial Arbitration

In settling international business disputes, the parties always tout confidentiality as the advantage of international commercial arbitration, who expects to protect all confidential information by international commercial arbitration. But the practices do not match wishes which the parties concerned. The practices show that duty of confidentiality does not always exist in international commercial arbitration. Not only many international commercial arbitration rules do not say explicitly about confidentiality of international commercial arbitration ,but also the judicial practices of some countries do differently about confidentiality , which causes questions of confidentiality in international commercial arbitration . This paper explains the related rules and cases by comparative research method, analysts the basic theory of confidentiality in international commercial arbitration and concludes: there is duty of confidentiality in international commercial arbitration, which according to the expressly agreement of parties or explicitly provisions of arbitration rules applied; and there are important exceptions of the duty of confidentiality; and the parties of international commercial arbitration should write the confidentiality clause into arbitration agreement or select the international commercial arbitration rules which have confidentiality provisions to prevent the disputes. With the development of our foreign trade economy ,we should establish our own system of confidentiality and pay enough attention to some relations such as the relationship between the confidentiality system and the value or supervision of arbitration.