International Arbitration and Mediation in Addressing Trans-Boundary Commercial Disputes: Singapore's Experience and Its Emerging Digital Dimension

Southeast Asia: Actual Problems of Development. 2024. Vol. 4. No. 4(65). P. 129–141.

Kanaev E.

The article analyses the digital support that Singapore’s international arbitration and mediation bodies – mostly, the Singapore International Arbitration Center (SIAC) and the Singapore international mediation center (SIMC) – give their trans-boundary commercial dispute resolution practices. On summarizing salient features of international arbitration and mediation, the paper explores the activity of SIAC and SIMC (as well as of the Singapore International Mediation Institute – SIMI and the Singapore International Dispute Resolution Academy – SIDRA) to finally turn to revealing instruments of their digital support. The latter focus is especially important, as routine procedural tasks may be performed by digital, mostly, AI-enabled, instruments that are being integrated into legal practices for streamlining supplementary processes. The author argues, however, that the digital transformation of Singaporean commercial arbitration and mediation bodies may well become a doubleedge sword. As a globally renowned international center of legal excellence, Singapore may find it problematic to resort to AI-enabled practices, since the human factor has mostly been behind the success stories of its legal venues.  The paper assesses these issues from a regional studies perspective, as the legal dimension is beyond its analytical focus. As the topic has not been a focus of scholarly attention in Russia and in other countries, the research has obvious relevance, originality and academic novelty.

Keywords: commercial disputes, artifical intelligence, International arbitration and mediation, SIAC, SIMC, SIMI, SIDRA, digital instruments