International arbitration

International arbitration is the established method for resolving disputes between parties to international commercial agreements. As with arbitration generally, it is a creature of contract, i.e., the parties' decision to submit any disputes to private adjudication by one or more arbitrators appointed in accordance with rules the parties themselves have agreed to adopt, usually by including a provision for the same in their contract. The practice of international arbitration has developed so as to allow parties from different legal and cultural backgrounds to resolve their disputes, generally without the formalities of their underlying legal systems.


The Advantages of International Arbitration

For international commercial transactions, parties may face many different choices when it comes to including a mechanism for resolving disputes arising under their contract. If they are silent, they will be subject to the courts of wherever a disaffected party decides to initiate legal proceedings and believes it can obtain jurisdiction over the other party. This may not sit well with parties that need to know at the time of entering into their contract that their contractual rights will be enforced. The alternative to silence is to specify a method of binding dispute resolution, which can be either litigation before the domestic tribunal of one of the parties or arbitration. If the parties choose to resolve their disputes in the courts, however, they may encounter difficulties. The first is that they may be confined to choosing one or the others' courts, as the courts of a third country may decline the invitation to devote their resources to deciding a dispute that does not involve any of that country's citizens, companies, or national interests. The second, and perhaps more significant difficulty, is that judicial decisions are not very "portable" in that it is difficult and sometimes impossible to enforce a court decision in a country other than the one in which it was rendered.


International Commercial Arbitration

The resolution of disputes under international commercial contracts is widely conducted under the auspices of several major international institutions and rule making bodies. The most significant are the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR), the international branch of the American Arbitration Association), the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA), the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, and the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC).


International Arbitration Institutions

• International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR)
• Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC)
• Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC)
• LCIA Court of Arbitration
• Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC)
• Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (ACICA)
• United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL)
• The Association for International Arbitration(AIA)
• Israeli Institute of Commercial Arbitration
• The Arbitration Association of Taiwan
• China International Economic Trade Arbitration Commission
• American Arbitration Association
• International Centre for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ICADR)

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