Excessive Reliance On Arbitration Could Stifle Growth of Law: Ex-India SC Judge

Former Supreme Court Justice S. Ravindra Bhat has cautioned that referring all disputes to arbitration could eventually slow the development of law, while acknowledging that Indian courts have significantly reduced their intervention in arbitral awards over the past decade.

 

Speaking at Dubai Arbitration Week 2026, Justice Bhat said legal principles had traditionally developed through rigorous judicial examination. The increasingly limited scope for reviewing arbitral awards, he suggested, raised questions about how new legal concepts would emerge and evolve.

 

“If you leave everything to arbitration, as we all believe that all disputes should be arbitrable, I think there will be a time when the growth of law will be static,” he said.

 

Justice Bhat was speaking at a panel discussion titled “Four Courts, One Award: Judicial Perspectives, Cross-Border Advocacy & the Great Common Law Debate”, organised by the Indian Institute of Arbitration and Mediation. The panel also featured former Abu Dhabi Courts judge Ahmed Bakry.

 

Justice Bhat clarified that he was not proposing a radical shift in the approach to arbitration. However, he said developments in technology and emerging questions surrounding damages and other legal doctrines called for consideration of the role courts should play in shaping the law.

 

He observed that judicial scrutiny had historically contributed to the development of legal principles. If disputes were increasingly resolved through arbitration, with only limited opportunities for court intervention, the evolution of new doctrines could become more difficult.

 

An arbitral award could withstand judicial scrutiny as long as it satisfied the internationally recognised threshold of public policy. This, he said, raised a wider question about how the law would continue to develop as arbitration became the preferred mechanism for resolving disputes.

 

On India's approach to judicial intervention, Justice Bhat said the position had undergone a considerable change over the past decade. The Supreme Court had repeatedly stressed that interference with arbitral awards should remain minimal and that public policy could not be invoked to accommodate every objection raised against an award.

 

“But the courts are more constrained now in the sense that unless something is egregious and it appears on the face of the award, the enquiry doesn't proceed further,” he said.

 

He also warned against drawing direct comparisons between India and Singapore, pointing to differences in the scale of India's judicial system, interpretations of public policy and the increasing pressure on commercial courts. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that the interpretation of public policy had become more consistent over the past decade.

 

Former Abu Dhabi Courts judge Bakry said courts seeking to promote arbitration must strike a balance between restraint and effective judicial supervision. They should ensure that parties had genuinely agreed to arbitrate, while recognising that judicial specialisation required more than simply establishing dedicated courts.