ABSTRACT
Arbitration cuts across broad historical periods, political regimes, legal systems, sectors of human activity, and subject matters. This chapter focuses on some of the features that define both the promise and the limits of arbitration as a means of transnational governance by contract. Together with contract, arbitration appears as a default means of social ordering to which societies naturally turn in the absence of other means they would have reasons to prefer. The most prominent actors in the development of arbitration are institutional actors, both public and private. The chapter then argues that arbitration's adjudicatory function serves as a significant source of legitimacy that is independent from consent-based sources of legitimacy. This entails an understanding of arbitration as a form of governance capable of bringing a measure of the rule of law to the transnational space. The justification of arbitral legitimacy in terms of the choice and consent of individuals is well-suited to economic analysis.
