Leadership, Legitimacy, Legacy: A Tribute to Alexis Mourre

From the moment Alexis Mourre stepped up to his role as President of the ICC Court, it was quite plain that he was there to make a difference: there would be significant changes to the rules and practices of the institution. It was perhaps not immediately clear whether these would be changes inspired or made necessary by the evolution of the world of international arbitration or whether, inversely, changes would be made to the ICC way of doing things with the intention of leading the way in transforming practices and assumptions in the world at large; either way, change there would be.

Among these many significant changes during his six years in office, there has been the transformation of ICC's practice with respect to the publication of awards. As opposed to the long-established practice of publishing excerpts from selected ICC awards in a number of media such as Clunet, ICC Bulletins and ICCA Yearbooks, in effect since 1 January 2019, all ICC awards, as well as tribunal orders, may be published, in full, once two years have elapsed. Due deference is shown to party autonomy and to questions of confidentiality, insofar as any party may, at any point prior to publication, object to it entirely, or require more or less redaction, as may be necessary to preserve the anonymity of persons or the confidentiality of any data or information.

Given the precautions taken, it cannot be reasonably objected that this development has given rise to an insoluble tension between, on the one hand, the private or confidential nature of most, if not all, international commercial arbitrations and, on the other, a supposedly overriding general interest in transparency, whether for its own sake or for the purpose of the nourishment of arbitration law and practice. Many do indeed consider that there is, in the parties' choice of international commercial arbitration, if not an express, at least an implied presumption that the dispute and the manner of its resol