Decision by division: The contractarian structure of commercial arbitration

In commercial arbitration, two decision makers, the arbitrator and the cour t, have authority over different aspects of the arbitrated dispute. The dis tribution of decision making, while not inevitable, is a persistent and pre valent part of the law of domestic and international commercial arbitration . Professor Walt's article analyzes this allocation. Professor Walt criticizes contractual and regulatory accounts as unable to explain or justify, it. He defends a contractarian analysis, based on the d istribution of decision making as a choice of a specified group under speci fied conditions of choice. In doing so Professor Walt justifies each of fou r decision-mating allocations recognized in commercial arbitration. He then uses the contractarian approach described to evaluate a sample of court de cisions.