Short answer. No. Article 2045 declares void and of no effect any clause that gives one party the power to choose more arbitrators than the other. The law insists the parties stand on an equal footing in constituting the tribunal, so a lopsided selection clause cannot be enforced.
What the law says
Any clause giving one of the parties power to choose more arbitrators than the other is void and of no effect.
Civil Code, Article 2045 — Void Arbitrator-Selection Clause. Read the full provision →
The rule, in flat language
The article is short and absolute: Any clause giving one of the parties power to choose more arbitrators than the other is void and of no effect. There is no balancing, no exception written into it, and no room for the other side to have consented its way around the prohibition. If the agreement lets one party name, say, two of three arbitrators while the other names only one, that clause is simply void. The phrase void and of no effect means it produces no legal consequences at all — it is treated as though it had never been written into the contract, whatever the parties may have signed.
Why equality in choosing arbitrators matters
The reason is the neutrality of the tribunal. Arbitration replaces a judge with people the parties themselves help select, and the fairness of that trade depends on neither side being able to stack the panel. A party who gets to appoint a majority of the arbitrators effectively controls the outcome, which turns a supposed adjudication into a decision by one side's nominees. The law will not lend its enforcement to a process rigged from the start. Equality in the number each party may choose is the safeguard that keeps arbitration a genuine method of dispute resolution rather than a formality dressed over a predetermined result.
What is struck down, and what survives
What Article 2045 voids is the offending selection clause, not necessarily the agreement to arbitrate itself. The parties may well remain bound to resolve their dispute by arbitration; it is only the unequal method of composing the panel that falls away, to be replaced by a lawful, balanced mode of appointment. The distinction matters because a party unhappy with a one-sided clause is not thereby freed of arbitration altogether — the commitment to arbitrate can stand while the defective mechanism is discarded. Nor can the imbalance be cured by the favoured party offering to appoint fewer; the clause as written is void, and the parties proceed on an equal basis.
Checking an arbitration clause before you sign
So when reading an arbitration clause, count the appointments. A clause giving each side an equal say — each naming one arbitrator, with a neutral chair chosen jointly or by a neutral appointing authority — is the ordinary, valid pattern. One that lets a single party name a majority, or reserve to itself the choice of the deciding arbitrator, is the arrangement Article 2045 strikes down. If you find such a term in a contract you are asked to sign, it is not a clause you must accept as the price of arbitrating; it is one the law would refuse to enforce, and it should be corrected to an equal method before signing rather than fought over afterwards.