The public underpinnings of private arbitration: Swiss Supreme Court judges at the service of international trade in the twentieth century

This paper analyses how the institution of Swiss private arbitration relied on the skills and prestige of Swiss Federal Supreme Court judges to ensure its functioning in the twentieth century. Prior to serving the business sector, many federal judges had worked within the Swiss “good offices” during the interwar period, chairing interstate arbitration tribunals. In doing so, these judges accumulated assets that would later serve them well on the private arbitration market, where these members of the Supreme Court of a “neutral” country gave the Swiss arbitration sector a competitive edge, in particular for politically sensitive, technically complex trade disputes with high litigation value. However, this liberal arrangement around an otherwise highly regulated profession gradually disappeared from the 1980s onward due to the increasing professionalization of arbitration at the international level and the introduction of new regulations for the Swiss judicial system.