Confidentiality in International Commercial Arbitration

After neutrality and international enforcement, the next most valued feature of international commercial arbitration is confidentiality. For reasons easy to imagine, businessmen do not want their trade secrets, business plans, strategies, contracts, financial results or any other types of business information to be publicly accessible, as would commonly happen in court proceedings. Yet the case law of arbitration shows that in practical terms confidentiality is not to be taken for granted e ' in fact, it has become one of the most undetermined matters in international arbitration. Although e the emperor of arbitration may have clothes,e ! as one scholar has quipped, his raiments of secrecy can be e torn with surprising easee !.