The neutrality of international arbitration: an attempt to deconstruct a myth.

Summary In the writings dedicated to international arbitration, neutrality is stamped with the seal of evidence. It is the word of the first pages, of the first chapters, integrated to the developments enumerating the advantages of arbitration and intended to explain the opportunity to resort to it, to justify its success, to promote it as an advertising argument beyond its initial, not to say natural, borders, or to set it up as a default mode of dispute resolution. Contrary to the other supposed advantages of international arbitration, which are particularly challenged by the judicialization of this mode of dispute resolution, neutrality is a given that cannot be discussed. It is a word, a discourse, a representation that escapes any criticism. Indeed, despite the virulence and the validity of the criticisms directly addressed to it, neutrality is constantly invoked as a shield or as a battering ram by the members of the arbitration community who wish to protect arbitration or to promote its expansion. Leaving aside the hypothesis of cynicism - of bad faith - on the part of the latter, the researcher analyzing the discourses of international arbitration is intrigued by the strength of a representation that defeats any attempt at destabilization and that conveys the illusion of an impossible challenge. By questioning the conditions of formation and dissemination of the discourse on the neutrality of international arbitration within a community of professionals, the analysis carried out in this research work makes it possible to explain why counter-discourses, particularly those based on the practice of arbitration and highlighting its partiality, fail both in their dissemination and in their attempt to destabilize the dominant discourse. The answer to why lies in the analytical tool that has been used here: the myth. It is thus through the study of the latter that the analysis or, more precisely, its deconstruction is constructed.