Exclusion of Legal Counsel in International Arbitrations Analysing the Scope of an Arbitrator’s Powers

The field of international arbitration has been the heart of new challenges and arguments in the recent times. It is crucial for the forerunners to keep amending the rules so as to maintain the adaptability of the process. An area to be pondered upon is the exclusion of counsel from the arbitral proceedings if they pose a threat to the credibility of the process. A conflict of interest is sparked by the addition of a counsel that jeopardizes the neutrality of an arbitrator. Even though there are no explicit provisions that deal with the issue of counsel exclusion, the majority of arbitration rules and statues grant the arbitrators an unmistakable power to conduct the arbitral proceedings as they see fit and appropriate, thereby vesting wide discretionary powers in the hands of an arbitrator which should be exercised in order to preserve the efficacy of the proceedings by the exclusion of a counsel that causes a conflict of interest. On the contrary, it has also been argued that such an order violates a party’s right to choose their own counsel as well as the right to present one’s case. This paper explores the role of an arbitrator in an international arbitration and analyses how an arbitrators’ powers should be broad enough to influence the course of the arbitral proceedings, so as to give an impartial result to the parties’ dispute.