International dispute resolution

This book contains a selection of documents relevant to international dispute resolution. The purpose of this book is to support students and the faculty of the Europa-Institut of Saarland University in courses and seminars on international commercial and investment arbitration, as part of the module International Dispute Resolution of the Europa-Institut’s postgraduate master’s program. International dispute resolution is a truly international area of law. Domestic percep - tions are often challenged. In addition to traditional positive law, soft (transnational) rules of law have firmly established themselves as applicable norms for arbitral decision-making. Sources of substantive law have a different dynamic than in domestic litigation and domestic arbitration. International arbitration lawyers, and students, find themselves working in many different jurisdictions and with different laws. Students with a good grounding in their domestic legal system are educated to be capable and even enthusiastic about working in different legal systems. As a result, they become cosmopolitan and internationalist in outlook and disposition. Rules on international dispute resolution, in particular on international commercial arbitration, are an anthology of international treaty rules, arbitration rules (soft law) and domestic rules which are rarely mandatory and enable default rules of the organization and conduct of arbitral proceedings. During the last thirty years, the international dispute resolution laws and rules were shaped in manifold ways: Traditional positive domestic law was harmonized through the implementation of model laws. Soft (transnational) rules of law, mostly developed by arbitration practitioners, have firmly established themselves as applicable norms for arbitral decision-making. And the Convention on the Recognition and Enforce ment of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Convention) has been shaped by interpretation and application of state courts and become the anchor of international arbitration. Although information on international dispute resolution laws and rules is readily available on the internet, and the proliferation of academic and legal writing is rather unparalleled both in terms of quantity and quality, there has been a lack of a compilation of manageable size that focuses on the primary sources of international dispute resolution laws and rules. We selected those international treaties, model laws, national laws, arbitration rules and other documents which are of particular importance in our academic context. The book, therefore, has a particular focus on international arbitral proceedings under the ICC Rules, the DIS Rules, the Vienna Rules, and the Swiss Rules. To this end, this book is not only a valuable tool for students in our LL. M. program, but also to the academic community in general, as well as to arbitration lawyers and arbitrators, in particular, when practicing in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.