For those who might be interested, I am passing along  this Call for papers for a Special Issue of Transnational Dispute Management (TDM, ISSN 1875-4120) titled “One Century of Arbitration in the United States: The Federal Arbitration Act at Home and Abroad” edited by professors Björn Arp and Kiran Nasir Gore.

The United States’ Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) was enacted on February 12, 1925 to provide businesses engaged in interstate commerce a means of dispute resolution that promised to be expeditious, cost-effective, and impartial. This development aligned with various domestic and international trends. At the time, many other countries had enacted, or soon would enact, legislation to facilitate the enforcement of arbitration agreements and any resulting awards. On the multilateral plane, the adoption of the FAA coincided with the development of other frameworks and institutions, including among others, the Geneva Protocol in 1923, the creation of the International Chamber of Commerce’s International Court of Arbitration in 1923, the American Arbitration Association in 1926, and the signing of the Geneva Convention in 1927.

While most other arbitration-related legislation around the world has since been repealed, amended, or further developed, the FAA has largely remained the same, with the notable additions of Chapter 2 (to align with the U.S.’s adoption of the New York Convention) in 1970 and Chapter 3 (to similarly align with the U.S.’s adoption of the Panama Convention) in 1990. Indeed, the resilience of the FAA’s text has been supported by jurisprudence arising from the various U.S. federal courts, in particular the U.S. Supreme Court, which has added richness and color on key aspects and topics, such as party autonomy, the competence-competence principle, the role and legal obligations of non-signatory parties, and choice-of-law.

While the FAA’s jurisprudential development has been a U.S. domestic process, it has also been understood to inspire legislative and jurisprudential developments in other countries, as well as the work of UNCITRAL and other international and transnational bodies and arbitral institutions.

To celebrate the FAA’s centenary, this Special Issue seeks to present varied views from within the U.S. and abroad. The Special Issue will be divided into two thematic parts: the first focusing on the FAA’s development and impact within the U.S., and the second part focusing on international dimensions. Some suggested topics are outlined below, and we welcome submissions that address these and other relevant issues.

1. The Evolution of the Federal Arbitration Act within the U.S.
   1. History of the legislative process, including drafting history etc., leading up to the enactment of the FAA
   2. Relationship between the FAA and U.S. state laws on arbitration
   3. Relationship between the FAA and U.S. federalism more broadly
   4. The constitutionality of the FAA
   5. Legal hermeneutics under the FAA
   6. The evolution of the principles of commercial arbitration through U.S. federal court jurisprudence
   7. How the practice of international commercial arbitration has impacted domestic interpretations of the FAA
   8. The impact of a single Federal arbitration law (the FAA) on consumer, employment and civil rights law and process, and class proceedings, and vice versa
2. The Impact of the FAA Abroad
   1. The FAA’s impact on the drafting of arbitration laws worldwide
   2. The FAA’s impact during the discussions leading to the development of the UNCITRAL Model Law (and its amendments) and other international instruments for arbitration
   3. The FAA’s and U.S. jurisprudence’s impact on the jurisprudential development of arbitration law in other countries
   4. Comparative law and the FAA
   5. The FAA and the “culture” of international commercial arbitration as practiced in the U.S. and worldwide

The above contains only a proposal of topics, but it is by no means exhaustive.

This Call for Papers coincides with many other efforts to mark this important occasion, including a June 5, 2025 commemorative conference about the FAA’s 100-year anniversary, “100th Anniversary of Federal Arbitration Act: The Future of Arbitration,” organized by the College of Commercial Arbitrators and the Washington College of Law’s Center on International Commercial Arbitration, for which TDM is the media partner. It may be that the conference and ideas discussed therein will serve as a catalyst for reaction papers or other works that could be included in this Special Issue.

Co-Editors:

Dr. Björn Arp Center on Int’l Commercial Arbitration, American University View profile

Kiran Nasir Gore Law Offices of Kiran N Gore, PLLC; The George Washington University Law School View profile

Timeline and submission guidelines:

Proposals, along with authors’ profiles (150-200 words), should be submitted to info@transnational-dispute-management.com. Proposals will be accepted on a rolling basis.

Full papers should be submitted by Friday, December 19, 2025. We encourage earlier submissions to enable a prompt review and editing process of articles.

Deadline for notification of acceptance by editors: Friday, January 16, 2026

Final Publication of articles, after the editorial process and review: Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Articles accepted for publication ahead of this schedule can also go through TDM’s on-line advance publication process allowing your work to reach its target audience as soon as the paper completes peer review and editing process. Contributors might be asked to cross-review up to two other papers.

The minimum word count of articles should be 5000 words (excluding footnotes, endnotes, appendices, tables, summary etc.). The maximum word count of articles should be 9000 words (10000 words including footnotes, endnotes, appendices, tables, summary etc. Longer contributions can be considered for publication on an exceptional basis. Articles should include summaries (150-200 words). Citation style, with emphasis on internet sources, should strictly conform to the 4th edn of the Oxford University Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA) along with the ‘OSCOLA 2012 Citing International Law Sources Section’. The layout of the articles should conform to Transnational Dispute Management’s (TDM) submission guidelines available at: www.transnational-dispute-management.com/contribute.asp (more information available upon request)

This call for papers can also be found on the TDM website here:
www.transnational-dispute-management.com/news.asp?key=2077