The award is then binding on the parties and may be entered and enforced as a judgment by the court. There is very limited opportunity to appeal from an arbitration award. Non-binding arbitration is identical to binding arbitration except that the parties are not bound by the result and either party still has the option to proceed to court if either party does not accept the arbitration award. Arbitrators are usually selected on the basis of their expertise in the area of dispute. For example, an arbitration panel for a construction contract dispute might include an engineer, a contractor and an attorney.
Parties can contract to limit or specify the authority of the arbitrator.
The possible contractual modifications are limited only by human ingenuity. A typical example of these special rules is baseball arbitration, where the arbitrator must select either the final offer of the owners or the final demand of the players and is not permitted to compromise between them. Mediation Mediation is fundamentally different from arbitration. As discussed above, the essence of arbitration is that a third party decides how the case should be settled. In mediation, the mediator has no authority to settle the case and, under most circumstances, will not let the parties know his personal opinion about settlement.