The law in the contract and the people on the tribunal: reading the ICC's 2025 statistics

In 95% of the cases registered in 2025, the contract contained a choice-of-law clause. Between them, those clauses selected the laws of 121 nations, states, provinces and territories.

The top of the table looks like a tie. English law was chosen in 113 cases, about 13% of new cases. "The laws of a US state" were also chosen in 113 cases. Behind them were Brazilian law (54), Swiss law (50), German law (48), French law (44) and Spanish law (43). Mexico and India (22 each), Qatar (18), Saudi Arabia (17), the United Arab Emirates (16), Poland (13), Colombia (11) and Portugal (10) complete the top fifteen.

That is the point the headline tie obscures. English law is one system. The US figure adds up more than a dozen. Counted system by system, English law (113) is well ahead of New York law (64), which is the most-chosen US law. The tie is in the categories, not in the laws.

By region, the laws of North and West Europe accounted for 41.3% of choices. North America (the US and Canada) accounted for 14.7%, Latin America and the Caribbean for 14.5%, East and South Asia and the Pacific for 8.9%, and the Middle East and Central Asia for 7.9%. Central and South-East Europe accounted for 6.7% and Africa for 4.3% (Sub-Saharan Africa 2.9%, North Africa 1.4%). Turkish law was chosen in 7 cases.

A further 1.7% of contracts referred to rules or instruments other than a national law, such as the CISG, the Incoterms rules, the UNIDROIT Principles or "international laws and principles". That is a small number, and it is worth noticing how small it is. Almost every party that writes a choice-of-law clause still picks a national system.

A tie at the top of the governing-law table is a tie between one legal system and fourteen.

Read the footnote before you quote the headline.

The seat is a separate choice from the governing law, and the 2025 figures show that the two do not line up. ICC arbitrations in 2025 were seated in 123 cities across 70 countries or territories. The parties chose the seat in most cases. The ICC Court fixed it in only 10% of them. By country, the most frequent seats were France (82 cases), the United Kingdom (78), the United States (70), Switzerland (53) and Singapore (42).

Swiss law was chosen 50 times and Switzerland was the seat 53 times. Brazilian law was chosen 54 times, but Brazil was the seat only 37 times. Parties are evidently willing to pair a law with a seat in a different country, and that pairing is a decision of its own. The companion piece on the world's leading arbitration rules treats the seat as one of the four clause terms that cannot be left out, and these figures support that.

In 2025, 998 individuals from 93 jurisdictions served as ICC arbitrators, through 1,386 confirmations and appointments. The parties nominated 804 of those arbitrators (58%) and the co-arbitrators nominated 208 (15%). The ICC Court appointed the remaining 370 (27%), either directly or on the proposal of an ICC national committee.

How each arbitrator was selected matters most when you look at diversity, because the three routes produce very different results.

Women's share of all ICC appointments has roughly trebled in ten years. The detail also shows where the change came from. The ICC Court's own appointments are close to parity. Party nominations, which make up the majority of appointments, are at 23%. In practice, the overall figure depends mostly on choices that parties and counsel make, not on choices the institution makes.

The annual series in the report's annex adds something the headline does not show. Women's share of all confirmations and appointments was 28.6% in 2022, 29.7% in 2023, 28.6% in 2024 and 29.6% in 2025. After a steady climb from 10.4% in 2015, the overall figure has stayed within about one percentage point for four years.

The roles are not evenly distributed either. Of the appointments of women, 41% were as co-arbitrator, 28% as sole arbitrator and 31% as president. For men the split was 60%, 16% and 24%. The 286 women arbitrators came from 66 jurisdictions, and the 712 men from 83.

In 2025, 34% of the individuals confirmed or appointed were under 50. The average age was about 56. Arbitrators appointed by the ICC Court were six years younger than the average. By gender, the average age was 58 for men (52 when appointed by the Court) and 52 for women (49 when appointed by the Court).

Repeat appointments are falling. In 2025, 28% of confirmations and appointments were repeat confirmations or appointments, compared with 34% in 2020. The report also says the Court will not, in principle, appoint the same person within twelve months of a previous appointment.

The age figures follow the same pattern as the gender figures. Where the institution holds the pen, the pool is younger and more diverse. Where the parties hold it, the pool looks more like it did a decade ago.

We have used only figures that appear in the ICC report itself. One table in the report does not agree with the text. The 2015 comparison chart gives 154 as the total number of women's appointments in 2015, while the annex table gives 136. Both sources give the share as 10.4%. For co-arbitrator nominations in 2015, the chart and the text give the count and the percentage the other way round from each other (6 and 10%, against 6% and 10). We have printed the percentages that are consistent across the report and left out the 2015 co-arbitrator figure.

The report also says the US contracts referred to the laws of 14 states. Its own regional table names 13 states plus one entry for "USA law(s)". We have used the report's wording.