Dispute Resolution International (DRI)
About Dispute Resolution International (DRI)
Dispute Resolution International is the journal of the IBA's Dispute Resolution Section. It provides in-depth discussion of current developments and topical issues in all areas of dispute resolution, including litigation, arbitration, mediation and other areas of alternative dispute resolution, as well as negligence and damages.
Dispute Resolution International is edited by Kim Rooney, an independent arbitrator and barrister at Rede Chambers, Hong Kong. Kim is assisted by an Editorial Board comprising leading practitioners from around the world.
Dispute Resolution International is distributed to all members of the IBA Dispute Resolution Section, giving it a readership of approximately 4,000. It is published twice a year and was launched in May 2007.
If you are interested in contributing to Dispute Resolution International, please contact Kim Rooney at: kim.rooney@redechambers.com and Chloe Woodhall at chloe.woodhall@int-bar.org.
If you are not a member of the IBA, you can find out more about how to join here.
Members of the Dispute Resolution Section committees receive Dispute Resolution International as part of their membership. PDF-only subscriptions are also available to non-members. Please email editor@int-bar.org to order.
ISSN 2075 5333
Pricing: £88 per issue
£176 per year, two issues per year
Five per cent agency discount available on annual subscription
Latest Issue - Vol 20 No 1 May 2026
This article considers whether there are grounds for optimism in the fight to make international arbitration more time and cost effective and draws upon the author’s experience supported by conclusions and recommendations from the 2025 Queen Mary White & Case International Arbitration Survey and the 2024 GAR-LCIA Roundtable. It highlights the benefits from greater involvement of clients, including the parties’ senior executives in international arbitration, and the responsibility of arbitral tribunals for more robust management techniques such as the early identification of probable issues in dispute and the control of experts. The article also looks at the use of AI tools in international arbitration and the role and responsibilities of arbitrators in relation thereto, their ability to meet those roles and responsibilities including the 2025 Chartered Institutes’ Guideline on the Use of AI in Arbitration, its identification of risks and benefits and the potential for appointing Tribunal AI Experts and briefly describes the American Arbitration Association / ICDR ‘AI Arbitrator Tool’.
The 2022 Revision of the Sports Law of the People’s Republic of China and the subsequent establishment of the China Commission of Arbitration for Sport (CCAS) mark a pivotal step in institutionalising athletes’ access to justice. This article situates the CCAS within China’s evolving legal framework and evaluates its independence, jurisdiction, and corresponding judicial oversight through comparative reference to international models such as the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and national-level institutions. It argues that while the CCAS embodies significant progress in providing a specialised forum for sports disputes, its effectiveness is constrained by its dependence on the General Administration of Sport of China (GASC), an unresolved ambiguity regarding its jurisdiction over sports work disputes, and the potential for substantive judicial review of its awards. The study concludes that the CCAS is at a formative stage of building an arbitration system characterised by ‘autonomy with accountability’, whose future legitimacy will hinge on structural independence and consistent jurisprudence.
This article considers whether arbitration institutions are measuring the wrong thing when assessing their performance. While caseload numbers seem to dominate institutional performance metrics, including those of the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, International Chamber of Commerce and Singapore International Arbitration Centre, international survey data in the 2024 SIDRA Survey and the 2025 Queen Mary University of London and White & Case International Arbitration Report tell a different story: international arbitration users care most about transparency and satisfaction with arbitral proceedings. This article advocates a fundamental reorientation of arbitral institutional priorities, demonstrating through empirical evidence that transparency – currently undervalued – holds the key to genuine user satisfaction. The article proposes concrete reforms to align institutional practices with what users actually need and value, including a digital first policy framework, diversity, sustainability and ESG policies and data, funding and enforcement.
The article analyses France’s Duty of Vigilance Law – a pioneering 2017 statute requiring large French companies to prevent serious human rights and environmental harms across their value chains, which has since inspired similar national legislation in several countries and, at EU level, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive – and its amendment through the Paris court’s first merits ruling in the SNCF Decision. It explains the law’s coverage thresholds, extraterritorial reach, mandatory vigilance plan and private enforcement before a specialised court. Unions challenged SNCF’s freight restructuring; the Court admitted but rejected all claims, finding that generic ecological assertions were too imprecise, transferred activities lay outside the group’s control, and plaintiffs bore the burden of proof. On tort, the Court held that restructuring materials demonstrated adequate consideration of social and environmental factors and that national climate commitments are not directly enforceable against private companies. Situated within rising global ESG litigation, the article underscores EU sustainability reporting scrutiny and urges rigorous documentation and cross‑border readiness. This ruling and the emerging French case law offer critical early guidance on how courts will likely enforce comparable due diligence regimes as they come into force across jurisdictions.
A review of Arbitral Awards, Second Edition (Singapore: Academy Publishing, 2025) by Chan Leng Sun SC. Updating the first edition (published in 2011 as Singapore Law on Arbitral Awards), this book provides a comprehensive study of Singapore law as it affects arbitral awards.
- Volume 19 Number 2, October 2025
- Volume 19 Number 1, May 2025
- Volume 18 Number 2, October 2024
- Volume 18 Number 1, May 2024
- Volume 17 Number 2, November 2023
- Volume 17 Number 1, May 2023
- Volume 16 Number 2, October 2022
- Volume 16 Number 1, May 2022
- Volume 15 Number 2, October 2021
- Volume 15 Number 1, May 2021
- Volume 14 Number 2, October 2020
- Volume 14 Number 1, May 2020
- Volume 13 Number 2, October 2019
- Volume 13 Number 1, May 2019
Open access articles
The Global Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Commercial Dispute Resolution in the First Year
While the pandemic disruption has extended for far longer than initially expected, courts (after the first wave), arbitral institutions and stakeholders in commercial dispute resolution have largely continued operations, increasingly supported by innovative digital technology, flexible scheduling and flexible cost structures, among other tools.
Released on Jun 02, 2021
The Global Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Commercial Dispute Resolution in the First Seven Months
In 2020, most of the world’s countries have had to respond to the severe disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which emerged in late December 2019 (the ‘pandemic’). The pandemic poses enormous health and socio-economic challenges. As of September 2020, it is not known when the pandemic will end; some countries are already experiencing further waves of infection. Globally, judiciaries and arbitral institutions have been under great pressure to continue operating during the pandemic [...]
How to order
Members of the Dispute Resolution Section committees receive Dispute Resolution International as part of their membership. PDF-only subscriptions are also available to non-members. Please email editor@int-bar.org to order.
ISSN 2075 5333
Pricing: £88 per issue
£176 per year, two issues per year
Five per cent agency discount available on annual subscriptions
Guidelines for authors
Copyright and Disclaimer
Copyright: The IBA holds copyright in all articles, newsletters and papers published by them. If you wish to reproduce or distribute any IBA publication or any part of an IBA publication, permission must be requested in writing from the Managing Editor at editor@int-bar.org, and due acknowledgment given.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in journals, newsletters and papers are those of the contributors, and not necessarily those of the International Bar Association.