仲裁庭成员的多样性问题

Jay-Z重新定义了说唱，他是否也能重新定义仲裁规则？在一起新的案件中，Jay-Z(本名Shawn Corey Carter)似乎有所尝试。最近在纽约，    Carter获得了对仲裁庭发出的中止仲裁的裁定。由QuinnEmanuel纽约办公室的AlexSpiro领导的团队提交的申请暂缓执行的法律备忘录值得一读。从某种程度上说，这个案件带有地方特色，但提出的论点可能会产生全球性影响。

嘻哈乐迷们会记得Jay-Z的名言:“伙计，我不是商人，我被拿来当作贸易!”这场纠纷与Carter的音乐圈以外的许多商事企业有关。2007年，Carter把自己设计的一个服装品牌(Rocawear)连同一组关联商标卖给了一家拥有并经授权的众多消费品牌的品牌管理公司。2007年该交易完成后，Carter发现自己的某些商标被其他的组织使用，因此而引发了纠纷。2015年7月,几位与纠纷相关的当事人达成了一项协议，协议中包含将纠纷在纽约提交仲裁的仲裁条款，该协议由美国仲裁协会(AAA)根据AAA的商业仲裁规则和纽约州法律管辖。Iconix根据该协议提起了仲裁。

仲裁条款中约定：“除非双方一致同意适用独任仲裁，否则将适用三人仲裁庭”。如果双方未能达成一致意见，将由AAA任命全部三名仲裁员。在AAA与双方当事人召开的案件管理电话会议上，双方当事人同意，如果其未能确定独任仲裁员，将各自从AAA的重大复杂案件仲裁员名册中选出四名仲裁员。AAA的重大复杂案件仲裁员名册是AAA的国家仲裁员名册的一部分。然后，再由AAA选出四人，并通知各方当事人，当事人可以将其认为不适格的仲裁员删除。

当Carter的代理律师准备从AAA重大而复杂的案件名单中选出四名他们觉得适格的仲裁员时，出现了问题。他们审查了名单上200多名常驻纽约地区的备选仲裁员，据说是出乎他们的意料，没有一名具备专业知识的仲裁员是非裔美国人。这里提请注意到Carter是黑人，他们向AAA请求提供一些种族中立的备选仲裁员，依其请求，AAA另外提供了六名备选仲裁员。其中三人是非裔美国人，两男一女，其中一人是Iconix律师事务所的合伙人。Carter的代理律师表示，他们无法确定另外两名备选仲裁员是否存在类似的利益冲突，也无法确认AAA单独推荐的仲裁员是否真的在AAA重大而复杂的案件名单上。(AAA不公布其仲裁员名单，部分原因是为了保持其提供收费的定制仲裁员名单的能力。)

对于这一问题，AAA建议Carter可以从已经确定的仲裁员中做出选择，否则AAA将代表他选择四名仲裁员。紧接着AAA选出了这四名备选仲裁员，其中包括两名仲裁庭提供给卡特的“种族中立者”名单中符合条件的非洲裔美国人，他综合考虑了此名单以及Iconix提出的四名备选仲裁员还有它自己提出的四名备选仲裁员，将此12名备选仲裁员的名单送达各当事方，请各方于2018年11月30日之前最终敲定四名备选仲裁员，否则，将由AAA自行任命仲裁员。Carter和他的相关当事人向纽约最高法院(具有一般管辖权的一审法院)申请临时限制令，要求中止仲裁。

Carter声称，仲裁协议有违纽约州宪法和法律规定的反对种族歧视的公共政策，因此无效。该法律争议既简单又复杂，简单的是，如果有什么符合公共政策的话，宪法权利似乎应该符合该法案（if anything amounts to public policy, constitutional rights wouldseem to fit the bill.）。复杂的是，因为对于缺乏备选适合的仲裁员是否会种族歧视根本不清楚。(在其他情况下，例如在刑事审判中陪审团的组成方面，很容易识别是否缺乏广泛代表性)。更加似是而非的是，像AAA这样的仲裁机构有义务提供各种适格的仲裁员——向法院递交的申请书中提出了“AAA未能提供具有解决复杂商业纠纷专业知识的非裔美国仲裁员”。然而，法院批准了该申请，11月28日，法院发布了一份临时限制令，将仲裁的庭审延期至12月11日。

一些人可能会驳回这一请求，认为这是为一个土豪诉讼当事人——也是一个美国恶霸——制定的诉讼伎俩。但这也给世界各地的仲裁带来了一些必须审视的难题。因为所有人都聚焦于仲裁员广泛代表性，往往会忽略仲裁员的公平性问题(除了在投资仲裁员中存在偏袒投资者或反发展中国家偏见的指控)。这一问题引发了广泛热议，特别是对性别、不能胜任仲裁职业的备选仲裁员的不公正,有损仲裁裁决质量的“群体思维”，对大众普遍接受的，在国际仲裁中盛行的由思想陈腐的男性仲裁员专断，这一做法合法性的质疑。

人们往往忽视的是，这种风险会影响人们对其合法性的认知:相同背景的仲裁员小组可能无法理解来自少数族裔或弱势背景的仲裁员的担忧，即便他们持开放态度并愿意尝试。Carter认为,由于没有具备丰富专业知识来解决复杂的商业纠纷的非裔美国人可供选择，剥夺了由与之相同背景相同生活经历的仲裁员审议其索赔请求的机会；以及在仲裁程序中不同种族仲裁员提出意见的机会。申请书中一直提醒大家注意的是，同质的仲裁员风险：因为对一方当事人的不良印象已经根深蒂固，即在决策过程中会有本能的偏见，而且仲裁员不能避免这一负面影响。 (引自Larry J. Pittman“强制仲裁:正当程序和其他宪法问题”,39Cap. U. L. Rev. 853, 862 (2011))。受到本能偏见影响的仲裁过程中，受到不利裁决的一方当事人很可能会得出结论:该行业没有公信力。

众所周知的是，当涉及到仲裁员的广泛代表性时，当事各方最有可能违规，其通常会选择“通常的嫌疑犯”（ “usual suspects”）而不是多样化的被任命的人。但即使这一现象属实，一些当事人可能也会理性地优先考虑一些因素,例如Carter在本案中所考虑的种族，基于同样的考量，其他当事人在指定仲裁员时，会考虑特定专业或种族背景:为了确保仲裁庭中至少有一位仲裁员（大抵出于同情）会支持这观点。仲裁员在国际仲裁等由当事人主导的制度下有权这样做。

由于是单方提出的申请临时限制令，Carter申请书中所提到的指控在12月11日的庭审上才会审理。因此，目前尚不清楚这一争论会维持多久，尽管法院在批准这一裁定时，认为可能会支持Carter声称的仲裁协议违反了纽约公共政策这一意见。不管该案件的最终处理结果如何,仲裁律师特别是仲裁机构应该考虑：可能不是基于协议起草的漏洞而引发的对仲裁协议的争议,而在于仲裁庭任命备选仲裁员的复杂性。如体育仲裁院等实行“封闭”仲裁员名单(只有名单上的仲裁员才可被任命)的机构应尽快考虑这些名单的组成，并审查其广泛代表性。特别是，名单中应有足够数量的基层群众代表，以便在仲裁员不适格或时间冲突的情况下，组成的仲裁仍不失代表性。(这个问题在AAA不公布名单的情况下尤其严重，但即使在公开名单的情况下，也有可能提起这一问题。)那些未能及时调整做法的机构，在被证明没有问题之前，可能会发现自己是有问题的。

整个仲裁界也应该意识到，对仲裁员多样性的渐进式改进已不再能够满足实践的需要(如果它们曾经是这样的话)。缺乏多样性的问题不容小觑，如果仲裁界在仲裁员多样性方面不能取得实质进展(包括但不限于，例如，提高欧洲白人女性在仲裁庭成员的数量)，各方当事人将会越来越重视这一点。此起诉讼为少数族裔仲裁员勾勒出一幅蓝图——不管当事人是出于真挚地担心缺乏多样性，还是出于使用答辩伎俩——以现有仲裁员群体缺乏代表性为由，阻挠仲裁。

【英文原文】

Can I Get A Diverse Tribunal ?

Jay-Z changed therap game. Can he change the arbitration game? In a new lawsuit, the rap star(legal name: Shawn C. Carter) seems to be trying. Carter has recently won a temporary order staying arbitration for a dispute in New York. The memorandum of law in support of the petition for a stay (filed by a team from QuinnE manuel’s New York office led by Alex Spiro) makes for memorable reading. It is in some ways a local particularity, a case with an Empire State of mind, but the arguments raised have potentially global ramifications.

Hip-hop fans will remember Jay-Z’s famous line, “I’m not a businessman; I’m a business, man!”.The dispute relates to one of Mr. Carter many commercial enterprises outside of his music career. In 2007, Mr. Carter sold a clothing brand that he had developed (“Rocawear”) along with a set of associated trademarks to Iconix, a brand-management company that owns and licenses a portfolio of consumer brands.After disputes arose over the use of certain trademarks by a different entity founded by Mr. Carter after the 2007 transactions (“Roc Nation”), several of the associated entities entered into a Master Settlement Agreement in July 2015, which contained an arbitration clause submitting any disputes to arbitration in New York, administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under the AAA’s Commercial Arbitration Rules and governed by New York law. Iconix commenced arbitration according to this provision.

The arbitration clause called for three arbitrators “unless the parties are able to agree on a single arbitrator”. If the parties could not agree, the AAA would appoint all three arbitrators. During an administrative conference call between the parties and the AAA, the parties agreed that if they could not decide on a sole arbitrator, they would each submit four names from the AAA’s roster of arbitrators for “Large and Complex Cases”, a subset of the AAA’s National Roster of Arbitrators. The AAA would then add four more names and return that longer list to the parties, who could strike the names of individuals they found to be unsuitable.

The trouble came when the lawyers representing Mr. Carter and his businesses tried to identify four arbitrators from the AAA’s Large and Complex Cases roster that they felt comfortable nominating. They reviewed more than 200 potential arbitrators on that roster who are based in the New York area but found—allegedly to their surprise—that not a single one who possessed the necessary expertise was African-American. Noting that Mr. Carter is black, they asked the AAA to provide the names of some “neutrals of color” whom they could vet, and the AAA responded by providing the names of six additional potential arbitrators. Of these, three appeared to be African-American—two men and one woman—and one of the men was a partner in the law firm representing Iconix. Mr. Carter’s counsel profess themselves unable to determine whether the other two proposed arbitrators have similarly disqualifying conflicts of interest, nor could they confirm whether the individuals suggested by the AAA are actually listed on theAAA’s Large and Complex Cases roster. (The AAA does not publish its arbitrator lists, partly in order to maintain its ability to provide tailored lists of potential arbitrators for a fee.)

At this point, theAAA suggested that Mr. Carter could make selections from the arbitrators already identified, or else the AAA would select four candidates on his behalf.The AAA then proceeded to choose those four candidates, which included the two not-obviously-conflicted African-Americans on the list of “neutrals of color” it had previously provided to Mr. Carter. It combined that list with four   candidates proposed by Iconix and four that it itself proposed, and sent thelist of twelve candidates to the parties, inviting each to strike up to fournames. The AAA set a deadline of November 30, 2018 for the parties to make their strikes, after which the AAA would appoint the tribunal itself. Mr.Carter and his associated entities turned to New York Supreme Court (a first-instance court of general jurisdiction), seeking a temporary restraining order enjoining arbitration.

Mr. Carter alleges that the arbitration agreement is void for violating New York’s public policy against racial discrimination, a policy is enshrined in the state constitution and statutory law. The legal argument is both simple and complex. It is simple because, if anything amounts to public policy, constitutional rights would seem to fit the bill. It is complex because it is not at all clear that a lack of potential arbitrators who share characteristics of an arbitrant constitutes racial discrimination (as a lack of diversity would clearly do in other contexts, such as in the composition of juries in criminal trials). It is even less obvious that arbitral institutions like the AAA have an obligation to provide diverse panels of potential  arbitrators—the petition invokes “the AAA’s failure to associate with African-American arbitrators with the expertise to decide complex commercial disputes”.Nevertheless, the petition was successful; on November 28, the court issued a temporary restraining order staying arbitration until a full hearing on December 11.

Some may dismissthis petition as a clever tactical gambit made on behalf of a wealthy litigant—an American Gangster no less. But it raises important and potentially painful questions for arbitration around the world. For all the attention that the issue of arbitrator diversity has garnered, an aspect that is oftenover looked is fairness to arbitrants (aside from theallegation of pro-investor or anti-developing-state bias in investment arbitrators).We have seen extensively discussed, especially with respect to gender, the unfairness to potential arbitrators who may be shut out of the profession, the danger that “group think” will compromises the quality of tribunal decisions,and the threat to popular legitimacy of international arbitration (especially investor-state arbitration) presented by the continuing dominance of “pale,stale, and male” arbitrators.

What often goes unaddressed is the reason for that risk to perceived legitimacy:that homogeneous panels of arbitrators may be unable to appreciate the concerns of arbitrants from minority or disadvantaged backgrounds, even when they are open-minded and willing to try. Mr. Carter’s argues thatlack of access to African-American arbitrators with sufficient expertise to resolve complex commercial disputes “deprives litigants of color of ameaningful opportunity to have their claims heard by a panel of arbitrators reflecting their backgrounds and life experience, and all but excludes the voices of diverse decision makers in the arbitration process.” The petition goes on to note that homogeneous panels risk “unconscious bias in decision-making because ‘negative images of “the others” is pervasive … [and] arbitrators are not exempted from its negative influences’” (quoting Larry J. Pittman, “Mandatory Arbitration: Due Process and Other Constitutional Concerns”, 39 Cap. U. L. Rev.853, 862 (2011)). Parties on the losing end of an arbitral process tainted by unconscious bias may well conclude that the industry is shady, it needs to be taken over.

It is often noted that parties appear to be the worst offenders when it comes to arbitrator diversity, frequently opting for the “usual suspects”over diverse appointees. But even if that phenomenon is real, some parties may rationally prioritize factors such as race—as Mr. Carter seems to have done in this case—for the same reasons that other parties appoint arbitrators with particular professional or national backgrounds: to ensure that at least one member of the tribunal will understand (and presumably be sympathetic to) their perspective. In a party-driven system like international arbitration, arbitrants are entitled to that. 

Applications for temporary restraining orders are made ex parte, so the allegations in Mr.Carter’s petition will not be contested until the hearing on December 11. It is therefore not clear how far this line of argument will proceed, although ingranting the order, the court will have found that Mr. Carter was likely to succeed on the merits of his claim that the arbitration agreement violates New York public policy. Regardless of the final disposition of the case,arbitration lawyers and especially arbitration institutions should consider themselves put on notice: arbitration agreements may be subject to attack based not on drafting defects in the agreements, but on the complexion of the pool of potential arbitrators from which the tribunal will be appointed. Institutions that operate “closed” lists of arbitrators (where only arbitrators on the list may be appointed), such as the Court of Arbitration for Sport, should immediately consider the composition of those lists and vet them for diversity.In particular, sufficient numbers of arbitrators from a wide range of communities should be represented in the lists, so that even if some are  conflicted or unavailable, diverse tribunals may still be formed. (The issue is particularly acute where, as with the AAA, the institution does not publish its lists, but could potentially be raised even where the lists are publicly available.) Institutions that fail to adapt may find themselves guilty until proven innocent.

The whole arbitration world should also beaware that incremental improvements on arbitrator diversity are no longer sufficient (if they ever were). Lack of diversity is not something we can brush off our shoulders. If the arbitration community cannot make real progress on arbitrator diversity (not just, for example, increasing the numbers of white,European women on tribunals), parties will increasingly force the point. This lawsuit provides a blueprint for minority arbitrants—whether genuinely concerned about lack of diversity or cynically employing defensive tactics—toderail arbitrations on the basis of lack of representativeness in the available pool of arbitrators.

By Joshua Karton

                                                                                                              来源：微信公众号 临时仲裁ADA