Arbitration: the Italian perspective and the finality of the award

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to analyse the arbitration as an instrument to resolve the disputes and sharing some thoughts on the main challenges that parties and professionals face in divesting the Courts of the power to adjudicate the dispute. A brief overview will be given on the reasons for the interest in arbitration and on the main provisions of Italian arbitration law that were reformed in March 2006. The paper then focuses on the major finality of the award as a consequence of the more limited grounds for setting aside under the reform of Italian arbitration law and compares such particular aspect with the developing praxis of the U.S. Courts of enlarging the grounds for setting aside an award to the manifest disregard of the law. We conclude that the manifest disregard of the law ground will not very likely find room for application within the Italian framework due to the deep differences between Italian and U.S. arbitration system.