For the past several years, businesses have been voting with their feet. Corporate headquarters have relocated to Texas. Companies have reincorporated here. Multinational firms have opened Houston offices. The Texas Stock Exchange is open for business. The Texas Legislature has created a specialized Business Court and a new appellate court to serve its users, and modernizing the state’s business laws is a standing priority. In C-suites and boardrooms far from Texas, deals have been sealed. The business world acknowledges that Texas takes commerce seriously.
Yet many of the same companies that have selected Texas as their home base, along with many others now weighing whether to move their corporate charters here from Delaware, habitually recycle arbitration clauses that cause their cross-border disputes to be seated elsewhere.
The mechanism at issue is a single line in a contract. Nearly every international commercial agreement contains an arbitration clause, and nearly every arbitration clause names a “seat,” or the legal home of the arbitration. The seat is not necessarily where the hearing takes place; it’s often not. But the seat corresponds to the jurisdiction whose arbitration law governs the proceeding and whose courts stand behind it: compelling arbitration when a party balks, granting interim relief while the tribunal is being formed and confirming or enforcing the award at the end. That provision is usually filled in with the predictable usual suspects: New York, London, Singapore and Miami.
On Aug. 26, over 50 practitioners, arbitrators, and in-house lawyers filled the JAMS Houston International Arbitration Center for a CLE program built as a working session rather than a lecture. “Refining the Case for Houston as a Seat for International Arbitration” was presented by JAMS, Houston Place of Arbitration and the Houston International Arbitration Club, in collaboration with the international law sections of the Houston Bar Association and the State Bar of Texas. The panelists included Julianne Jaquith of Quinn Emanuel, Michael Massengale of JAMS and Dr. Darya Shirokova of FBFK Law and Houston Place of Arbitration. William W. Russell of Reed Smith moderated the discussion, which included interventions by at least a dozen attendees.
There were two main questions put to the room: Why isn’t Houston in the mix of leading arbitral seats? What would it take to change that? The discussion was held under the Chatham House Rule, so what follows reports on the conversation in the room, not who said what.
For general counsel, here’s the takeaway. On the criteria that users of arbitration say matter most, Houston already meets the standards set by the established seats. On cost and convenience, it has a real edge. For the right disputes, it is a neutral seat that belongs on the shortlist. And a working group is organizing to put these ideas into practice, including a modernized Texas international arbitration statute.
Everybody’s Choosin’ Texas
To borrow a phrase from a popular song, everybody seems to be choosin’ Texas, and the corporate world is no exception.
The reasons companies have come to regard Texas as a business-friendly base of operations are familiar by now: courts that are predictable and commercially sophisticated, a legislature willing to update business law rather than let it calcify, a deep professional-services market, global connectivity and a political culture that treats commerce as something to be supported. Every one of those considerations applies with equal force to a different question: Where should companies resolve international commercial disputes when they arise?
The choice of seat is the dispute-resolution counterpart of the choice of where to incorporate, and it should be made the same way: on the merits against a dynamic background of shifting considerations, not by default. The infrastructure Texas built for relocating companies turns out to be wired for this purpose.
The Business Court and the Fifteenth Court of Appeals were created two sessions ago to give complex commercial disputes a specialized judiciary. In the last session, the Texas Legislature extended the Business Court’s jurisdiction to arbitration-related proceedings, including motions to compel, applications to confirm or vacate awards, and requests for interim relief in aid of arbitration. The federal court system encompassing Houston, which also would hear many court proceedings ancillary to international arbitrations, has its own long-standing, robust pro-arbitration legal framework. The wave of corporate migration can capitalize on a dispute-resolution dimension that the market has not yet appreciated. That is the opportunity.
Seat-Selection Criteria and How Houston Measures Up
Users of arbitration primarily want two things from a seat: neutrality and confidence that the local courts will support the process and stand behind the award. The Queen Mary University of London surveys of arbitration users, conducted with White & Case, have named the same three criteria in every edition since 2015: support for arbitration by the local courts, neutrality and impartiality of the legal system and the national arbitration law, and a strong track record of enforcement. The 2025 edition, the largest survey yet, with more than 2,400 respondents, confirms that nothing has changed in this regard. The 2021 edition measured the relative importance of those criteria, asking what would make seats outside the top tier more attractive. The top three responses were greater judicial support (56 percent), greater neutrality (54 percent) and a better enforcement record (47 percent). Those are factors against which all seats should be judged, and Houston measures up well.
Courts. The Supreme Court of Texas and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit have long records of enforcing agreements to arbitrate and upholding awards. The Southern District of Texas, where much of the court activity in Houston-based international cases will actually land, has a deep bench of experienced judges. And Texas now has something it did not have three years ago: a specialized state-court pipeline for commercial disputes, with the trial-level Business Court expressly empowered to handle arbitration-related proceedings, and review available from the highly qualified justices of the new Fifteenth Court of Appeals.
Law. Arbitrations seated in Houston operate under both the Federal Arbitration Act and the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, which has separate chapters for domestic and international arbitration. Texas was an early adopter in 1989 when it codified the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration as CPRC Chapter 172, a mere four years after the Model Law was promulgated. One point that may surprise and reassure foreign parties is that counsel do not need a Texas license to appear in an arbitration seated here.
Institutions, neutrals and infrastructure. Major arbitral institutions have a strong presence in Houston, and the international bar gathers here regularly for conferences, such as the annual Joint Conference on International Energy Arbitration. The local bench of arbitrators and counsel is deep and sophisticated. And because Houston is a major litigation market, the full support ecosystem a hearing needs is readily available locally: purpose-built hearing facilities, court reporters, interpreters and translators, trial-technology and e-discovery vendors, and graphics and presentation specialists.
Cost and convenience. Hearing space, hotels and local support in Houston cost well below their equivalents in New York or London. George Bush Intercontinental Airport offers direct flights to the major Latin American capitals and to Europe. For a party flying in from Mexico City, Bogotá, São Paulo or Frankfurt, Houston is an easy trip. And for the counsel, witnesses and party representatives who spend a week here, it is an easy stay: world-class restaurants, including a growing roster of Michelin-starred kitchens; the Museum District; a Theater District with resident opera, ballet, symphony and theater companies; major-league sports year-round; and the world-famous Houston Rodeo.
Industry and technical depth. Energy, infrastructure, shipping and maritime, healthcare and life sciences, technology and aerospace are concentrated in Houston in a way no other seat can match — and with them the engineers, geoscientists, industry specialists and experienced expert witnesses those disputes require. That matters to users. The Queen Mary/Pinsent Masons energy arbitration survey ranks the ability to select arbitrators with technical experience second only to neutrality among the features energy sector users value most.
Where Houston is the natural choice. Neutrality is expected of every seat, and it has a practical edge: A counterparty negotiating with a Texas company may resist a Texas seat for that reason alone, whatever the actual record of the courts is. As such, Houston’s strongest case for increased utilization is as a neutral seat for parties from elsewhere whose deals touch the industries concentrated here: a Mexican operator and a Canadian producer in an energy joint venture; a European medical device maker and a U.S. distributor, with the world’s largest medical center as backdrop; a Latin American shipowner and a Gulf Coast charterer in a maritime dispute; a technology license dispute where neither side wants the other’s home courts. The pitch should be made to industries and to regions — the United States and Latin America in particular — where choosing Texas makes sense on the merits.
Two anticipated objections deserve a direct answer. The first concerns Miami, which many Latin American users have come to regard as a gateway seat. Simply put, there’s no zero-sum game, and promoting Houston does not need to come at Miami’s expense. Houston competes well on cost, on industry and technical depth, and on commercial ties to the region. Another potential objection is the reputation of Texas-style litigation: broad discovery, juries and the rest. But sophisticated users understand that these concerns should not apply to an arbitration proceeding. An arbitration seated in Houston will be conducted by party-selected arbitrators under party-selected institutional rules, not the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure. Information exchange is controlled by the tribunal, and there is no jury.
On the fundamentals, Houston is as good as the established seats. On cost and convenience, frequently it will be better.
Proving What We Already Know
Everyone who practices here knows that Texas courts are reliably supportive of arbitration. Almost no one outside Texas has a ready way to confirm it. A general counsel in Monterrey or Frankfurt evaluating Houston has no obvious resource showing how Texas state and federal courts handle motions to compel, applications to confirm or vacate, and requests for interim relief, or how long those proceedings take.
The aforementioned working group proposes to close that gap with an empirical survey of reported Texas decisions — state and federal, trial and appellate — on the enforcement of arbitration agreements and awards, the frequency and success of challenges, and the availability of interim relief, published in a form that a foreign general counsel can hand to a board. Earlier surveys of arbitration-related litigation in Texas provide a starting point. The case for Houston can and should be made with data, not just rhetorical assurances.
What Is Missing and the First Priority
Houston’s near-term constraint is neither infrastructure nor the absence of arbitral institutions. The city has the courts, the law, the neutrals, the venues and the industry. What it lacks is recognition among decision-makers as a truly viable seat of arbitration. Houston appeared in the published Queen Mary survey results for the first time in 2025, mentioned by 2 percent of respondents. Houston is on the map, but only just.
The main priority is upgrading the local statute. Texas enacted CPRC Chapter 172 in 1989, making it one of only a handful of states with a dedicated international arbitration law. It has not been comprehensively updated since then. The UNCITRAL Model Law on which it was built was substantially revised in 2006, the United Kingdom modernized its arbitration act in 2025, and other leading seats have kept pace. At a minimum, a modernized Chapter 172 should bring Texas current with the 2006 Model Law amendments (electronic-form arbitration agreements and a structured regime for interim measures), add express recognition of emergency arbitrators, supply a default rule for the law governing the arbitration agreement and confirm tribunal authority for summary dispositions and statutory immunity for arbitrators.
There are two reasons a statutory upgrade comes first: The 90th Legislature convenes in January 2027, and a bill needs sponsors and a draft-ready proposal well before then. And the legislative appetite that produced the Business Court and recent corporate-law reforms is the same appetite a Chapter 172 modernization taps. Even though many court proceedings relating to international commercial disputes will end up in federal court anyway, the Texas statute still matters as a modernized complement to the Federal Arbitration Act, which was passed in 1925, and it serves as a welcome mat for international disputes. The law of the seat will travel with every arbitration clause that names Texas, regardless of which courthouse a dispute eventually reaches.
What Else Is Coming
The meeting also generated a number of other action items. Promotional efforts would benefit from a reference document about Houston as a seat — built on the enforcement data discussed above and a comparative cost model, and benchmarked against New York, Miami and London — that can be shared with executives and lawyers who negotiate dispute-resolution clauses.
The message needs to be communicated to the people who have the ability to name Houston as a seat. Arbitration conferences reach arbitration lawyers, but the people who negotiate this clause are at energy, health care, technology and maritime industry conferences; in-house counsel programs; and the business events Houston already hosts. The strategy should be to meet decision-makers where they are rather than organizing new events.
We also want to engage the organizations that foreign businesses consult before they choose a seat, such as the Greater Houston Partnership, the Baker Institute for Public Policy, the World Affairs Council of Houston, chambers of commerce and trade associations, and the consular corps.
By targeting outreach to business decision-makers and counsel in Mexico and Latin America, we can tailor programs to the commercial teams that negotiate deals, not only their lawyers.
What In-House and Transactional Counsel Can Do Now
The seat of arbitration, administering institution, procedural rules, governing law, language of the proceeding, and hearing location are each separately selectable. Many transactional lawyers, and most businesspeople, likely assume these options are bound together. They are not. A contract governed by Mexican law can be arbitrated under International Chamber of Commerce rules, seated in Houston and conducted in Spanish, with hearings wherever the parties find convenient.
From there, the guidance is practical. When a cross-border deal is in an industry Houston knows well and neither party is at home in Texas, Houston belongs on the shortlist, and it should be evaluated on the same criteria applied to New York or London. Dealmakers should choose the seat deliberately and separately from the physical hearing venue.
Texas led once before: In 1989, it became one of the first states to give international commerce a dedicated arbitration law. The companies that have moved here since made the judgment that Texas is where business belongs. The logical next step is to make the same judgment about where business disputes belong. A consensus is building about a strategy to promote Houston as a global center for dispute resolution.
Hon. Michael Massengale (Former), FCIArb, is an arbitrator with JAMS, based in the JAMS Houston International Arbitration Center. He served 10 years as a justice of the Texas First Court of Appeals in Houston and, before that, practiced as a trial partner at Baker Botts. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and of the College of Commercial Arbitrators.
William W. Russell is a partner at Reed Smith in Houston, where his practice focuses on energy disputes, international arbitration and cross-border commercial disputes. He is an adjunct professor of international commercial arbitration at the University of Houston Law Center.