The public underpinnings of private arbitration: The Swiss high magistracy put in service of international trade, 20th century

This paper analyses how the institution of Swiss private arbitration relied on the competence and prestige of the Swiss high magistracy to ensure its functioning in the 20th century. Prior to serving the business sector, many federal judges worked for the Swiss good offices during the Interwar period, chairing interstate arbitration tribunals. In doing so, these judges accumulated various resources that they would later use on the private arbitration market. In particular, for politically sensitive, technically complex trade disputes with high financial stakes, these members of the Supreme Court of a “neutral” country proved to be highly competitive assets for the Swiss arbitration sector. However, this liberal arrangement around a profession that was nevertheless highly regulated gradually disappeared from the 1980s onwards due to the increasing professionalisation of arbitration on an international scale and because of a new regulation of the Swiss judicial system.