UNCITRAL and ISDS Reform (Online): Crossing the Chasm

To text or not to text? That is the question. Or, rather, that was the question at UNCITRAL when Working Group III resumed its deliberations online last week. The Working Group’s focus was structural reforms, first selection and appointment of permanent or fixed-term adjudicators, then an appellate mechanism. As readers of this series know well, states hold different substantive views about the desirability of structural reform and these differences came out clearly in their interventions. But the more significant question of the week was one of process: whether, despite these differences, the time had come to move to text in an effort to “cross the chasm” of developing reforms. During the week, that question was answered in the affirmative.