En­force­ab­il­ity of pre-arbitration ne­go­ti­ation and me­di­ation clauses: A com­par­at­ive ana­lys­is of the strict Eng­lish ap­proach and the flex­ible French and Swiss ap­proaches

De­vel­op­ment sum­mary

Meysam Aman­atkar, Alireza En­tez­ari Na­ja­fabadi and Mo­ham­mad­reza Moein­fard in­vest­ig­ate wheth­er by­passing con­trac­tu­al ne­go­ti­ation or me­di­ation stages can bar access to ar­bit­ra­tion. They com­pare lead­ing ju­di­cial de­cisions and stat­utory pro­vi­sions in Eng­land, France and Switzer­land using a descriptive-analytical method.

Ac­cord­ing to the au­thors, Eng­lish law re­quires com­plete cer­tainty about pro­ced­ure, time limits and the con­sequences of non-compliance, while French law pre­sumes such clauses to be non-mandatory and re­cog­nises a pro­ced­ur­al bar only where the parties’ in­ten­tion is ex­pli­cit and un­equi­voc­al. The Swiss ap­proach re­spects party autonomy while con­sid­er­ing good faith and the parties’ actual con­duct. The au­thors con­clude that en­force­ab­il­ity de­pends on each legal system’s pre­sump­tions con­cern­ing good faith, con­trac­tu­al in­ter­pret­a­tion and the status of ar­bit­ra­tion.