Comparative Research On Expedited Procedure Rules In International Arbitration

Arbitration is often chosen as a method of settling disputes in international transactions.Compared with litigation,arbitration enables parties to decide the procedure schedule through the agreed procedural timetable,and has considerable advantages in the recognition and enforcement of the final award.Parties under dispute always want dispute resolution to be both fair and economical.However,in recent years,owing to the misuse of party autonomy,there have been more and more procedural delay,which consumes a lot of time and costs,resulting in serious waste of arbitration resources.In addition,higher fees charged by the arbitrators also make parties quite unacceptable.In order to enhance the speed and reduce the costs,world's leading international arbitration institutions have revised their arbitration rules and introduced a set of new mechanism of settling disputes,namely Expedited Procedure.Expedited procedure can improve efficiency of the arbitration.The tribunal will issue an award within a certain period of time after the case get transferred from arbitration institutions.Expedited procedure is getting popular among commercial parties,and has become a leading trend in international arbitration.Expedited procedure differs from normal arbitration procedure in many ways,which also constitutes the characteristics of expedited procedure.In terms of the scope of application,expedited procedure is characterized by its flexibility,making itpossible for cases in various circumstances to be subject to expedited procedure.As for time limit of the procedure,arbitral tribunal must issue an award within a certain period of time.Besides,expedited procedure may be converted to ordinary procedure and continue to be heard by the same tribunal.However,various institutions make different provisions on a number of specific issues,including the application of the sole arbitrator,documentary trial,and restrictions on parties' procedural rights.However,awards issued from expedited procedures are currently facing some obstacles in the recognition and enforcement by local courts.The characteristics of expedited procedure conflict with the long-standing principle of party autonomy and due process,and courts hold different opinions in their approach to these conflicts.To deal with these conflicts in the future,parties,arbitration institutions and arbitral tribunals are required to identify their respective positions in the expedited procedure and cooperatively grasp the balance between the conflicts.At present,expedited procedure rules have also been incorporated into the arbitration rules of arbitration institutions in China,but there are still problems in which translations of “Expedited procedure” are not uniform and the rules are too brief and loose.It is of great necessity to keep perfecting expedited procedure rules by learning foreign leading practices,including introducing case management conference,respecting parties' arbitral agreements,and reasonably restricting parties' procedural rights.