In international
commercial arbitration, a delicate balance exists between safeguarding
procedural integrity and preventing tactical disruptions. However, the
Singapore Court of Appeal’s (SGCA’s) decision in DJP v. DJO threatens this
equilibrium by establishing new standards for arbitral conduct that significantly
impact repeat appointments. To that end, this article critically examines two
problematic principles emerging from this decision: the ambiguous threshold for
permissible ‘copying’ in arbitral awards and the impractical ‘equality of
information’ requirement among tribunal members. Although intended to protect
procedural fairness, these standards place arbitrators in an untenable
position, demanding artificial mental segregation between related proceedings
while failing to acknowledge how human cognition naturally incorporates
accumulated knowledge. Moreover, by importing judicial standards into
arbitration without corresponding remedial mechanisms and treating all copied
content equally regardless of type, this decision risks transforming natural justice
principles into strategic weapons against unfavourable awards, potentially
undermining arbitration’s core advantages of expertise, efficiency, and
finality.