Originally from The American Review of International Arbitration (ARIA)

PREVIEW PAGE

TRIBUTES

For fifty years, George Bermann has stood at the center of international arbitration as scholar, institution-builder, arbitrator, and mentor. His tenure at Columbia Law School is not merely a matter of longevity; it is a story of intellectual leadership that helped define the contours of modern transnational dispute resolution.

From the moment he joined the Columbia faculty in 1975, Professor Bermann embraced the idea that arbitration is not simply a technique for resolving disputes, but a cornerstone of the international legal order. At a time when international commercial arbitration was still consolidating its doctrinal foundations in the United States, he approached the field with the rigor of a comparativist and the vision of a globalist. His scholarship consistently bridged legal systems, drawing from American, European, and broader transnational perspectives to illuminate the structural principles that sustain arbitration’s legitimacy.

A central thread running through Professor Bermann’s scholarship is a sophisticated and principled defense of what may fairly be called a pro-arbitration stance. For Bermann, being “pro-arbitration” has never meant uncritical deference to arbitral tribunals. Rather, it reflects a deep commitment to enforcing arbitration agreements, respecting party autonomy, and interpreting international instruments—most notably the New York Convention—in a manner that advances their underlying purpose: the facilitation of reliable and predictable cross-border dispute resolution. His writings have consistently argued that courts play a supportive, not supervisory, role in the arbitral process, intervening only within carefully circumscribed limits. In articulating this vision, Bermann helped shape a jurisprudential culture in which arbitration is viewed not as a threat to judicial authority, but as a complementary and indispensable component of the rule of law in international commerce.