Leadership, Legitimacy, Legacy: A Tribute to Alexis Mourre

Among the qualities often found in good leaders—ambition, energy, intuition, the ability to inspire, the wisdom to balance long-term goals with short term imperatives—vision deserves pride of place. For if politics is the art of the possible, as Bismarck famously observed, it takes a leader with vision to broaden the horizon of what is possible and be, as Martin Luther King Jr. aspired to, not merely ‘a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus'.

When he took the helm of the ICC Court, in July 2015, Alexis Mourre had vision for an institution he already knew well, having served as Vice-President of the Court for six years. Determined to build upon the achievements of his predecessors, he took stock of what he considered to be the strengths of the Court—the quality of its services and its reputation for global reach— while being keenly aware that as the leading international arbitral institution, the ICC Court had much to lose if it were to rest on its laurels in the increasingly competitive environment in which it was operating.

In his first ‘Message from the President' published in the ICC Dispute Resolution Bulletin, Alexis identified the core values on which his pursuit of expansion and greater efficiency would rest: diversity, transparency and ethics. Reliance on these values as guiding posts has defined Alexis' tenure, making them, along with efficiency, appropriate rubrics under which to review some of the ICC Court's achievements under his leadership.