Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 3658

Arbitration and adjudication. Their similarity in the function of resolving disputes and their difference in that the former is based on the litigants’ choice of the arbitrator and their trust in him, while the latter is based on their recourse to courts composed of judges whom they do not choose and with whom they have no ties. Consequence: a litigant’s knowledge that one of the grounds of disqualification applicable to judges exists in the arbitrator, and his failure to challenge him before raising any plea or defence on the merits of the arbitration, forfeits his right to invoke that defect and does not invalidate the court’s adjudication, because this does not concern public order, unlike the nullity of the adjudication of a judge disqualified from hearing the action.