Collective Arbitration Under the DIS Supplementary Rules for Corporate Law Disputes: A European Form of Class Arbitration?

Abstract

A great deal of attention has been paid recently to class arbitration, a US form of large-scale arbitral relief that brings many of the procedures used in judicial class actions into the arbitral context. However, the United States is not the only country to use arbitration to provide collective redress. Germany has recently developed its own form of collective arbitration through the promulgation of the DIS Supplementary Rules for Corporate Law Disputes. This article compares the DIS Supplementary Rules with the American Arbitration Association's Supplementary Rules for Class Arbitration to identify differences and similarities between the two procedural approaches and to consider the extent to which the two rule systems reflect the jurisprudential preferences of Germany and the United States.

Keywords: class arbitration, arbitral, DIS, corporate, disputes, American Arbitration Association