Barry Appleton (New York Law School; Balsillie School of International Affairs) has posted After ARIHQ: The Non-Delegable Arbitration Mandate in the Age of AI on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In April 2026, the Superior Court of Quebec annulled an arbitral award for the first time in the world on the ground that the arbitrator had taken his reasoning from a generative AI tool whose every cited authority was a hallucination. The decision was reported within days across the global arbitration community. It has been read as a Quebec curiosity, as a cautionary tale for counsel, and as the empirical case that the leading skeptics of AI soft law had said did not yet exist. It is each of these things. It is also something more useful: a long-awaited application of an old principle to a new tool. The arbitrator’s mandate is personal. It is the reason the parties chose this arbitrator and not another. It can be supported by tools. It cannot be transferred to them. The arbitrator may take help. The arbitrator may not transfer the decision.
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