David Rosenbloom Comments on Baseball-Style Mandatory Binding Arbitration

Tax Notes Today quoted  H. David Rosenbloom concerning baseball arbitration as a means of resolving treaty disputes. For the complete article, please visit Tax Notes Today's website (subscription required).

Excerpt taken from the article "News Analysis: The Case for Optimism About Mandatory Arbitration" by Marie Sapirie for Tax Notes Today.

The EU and U.S. Models

The experiment in different styles of arbitration has been going on long enough that it is reasonable to want to assess the results, but that is hard because arbitrations are not public. However, it seems that baseball-style mandatory binding arbitration is chugging along fairly efficiently while the European model has essentially stalled.

"Baseball arbitration is infinitely preferable to the alternative," said H. David Rosenbloom of Caplin & Drysdale Chtd. "In baseball arbitration, the power of the arbitration panel is circumscribed, so the process addresses many of the objections to arbitration." In particular, baseball arbitration is less intrusive upon domestic tax policy because the arbitration panel cannot act as a judicial body, express its own views about the case, or tell either country how to apply tax laws.