Paying Attention to Choice of Law in International Commercial Arbitration - or - Why the Conflict of Laws Always Matters
Michael Douglas, Vivienne Bath, Mary Keyes and Andrew Dickinson (eds), Commercial Issues in Private International Law - A Common Law Perspective (Hart Publishing, 2019)
Posted: 16 Jul 2019
Date Written: 2019
Abstract
International commercial arbitration is an alternative to State court litigation, though still constitutes formal dispute resolution - where arbitrators apply the law to resolve a dispute. Arbitration has an interesting intersection with private international law - one aspect of this intersection involving identification of the substantive law governing the merits. Parties will often choose this law, though sometimes they will not, leaving it to the arbitrators to identify the governing substantive law.
Nevertheless, even where parties do select a governing substantive law, the arbitrators' own identification of the law may still be necessary. This book chapter identifies and analyses, with reference to case law examples, nine categories of case where a purported party choice of law will not obviate the need for arbitrators to themselves identify the governing law for one, more, or all issues in dispute.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation