CAcert's Arbitration Forum

CAcert resolves disputes through the Dispute Policy which includes the rules of Arbitration. For a nice introduction to CAcert's forum, see the Handbook. Additional working practices can be found in ArbitrationPractices (wip).

Management of Cases

Disputes for arbitration should be sent by email to support@cacert.org. A Case Manager is allocated, ensures that the case is logged and works with the Dispute Resolution Officer to assign an Arbitrator. The Case Manager's Handbook is a guide to how the CM process works.

The CAcert Community member and others involved in a dispute will be notified of the arbitration via email. An example of the email is in this ArbitrationAnouncement .

For arbitration case managers and arbiters there is a moderated email list: cacert-arbitration@lists.cacert.org .

Here is the list of current ArbitrationCases. More organization probably needs to be done.

Fees: are currently zero. The policy permits fees for filing a dispute, but none are currently set.

Jurisdiction and Law

CAcert chooses the law of NSW, Australia, which is its home. This law is part of the English Common Law tradition, so it has much in common with UK law and US law.

The jurisdiction is CAcert's own: by choosing to run its own Arbitration, it chooses to in essence create its own courts. This works for civil actions, ones between people, but it does not work for criminal actions. The laws of Arbitration also specify various exceptions such as unconscionability, which means forcing someone to do something that is so against their conscience that it is unfair. Note however that the courts of the land define what that means, not the individual.

These choices are established in a clause in the CAcert Community Agreement

Credits

The CAcert Arbitration project was the product of many people: Teus Hagen, Jens Paul, Philipp Güring, Ian Grigg. It was approved in a full sitting of the Board and Advisory at Pirmasens, Germany, m20070918.3

Further Deep Research

For introductions, try:

International Framework

Arbitration operates to an international framework:

Australian Law -- Choice of Arbitration Clause

Law of NSW, Australia is the choice of law within the agreement, reflecting CAcert's origins. This suggests that reading the Australian and NSW acts on Arbitration is a good start for deep research.

Brazil

Germany

Others....

Should research Netherlands, EU model laws, Austria and USA.

Arbitration Clauses

See: