ISSN: 1875-435X

The predominant system of rules is the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards of 1958 (the "New York Convention"). The New York Convention was drafted under the auspices of the United Nations and has been ratified by more than 140 countries, including most major countries involved in significant international trade and economic transactions. The New York Convention requires the states that have ratified it to recognize and enforce international arbitration agreements and foreign arbitral awards issued in other contracting states, subject to certain limited exceptions. These provisions of the New York Convention, together with the large number of contracting states, have created an international legal regime that significantly favors the enforcement of international arbitration agreements and awards.

International arbitration allows the parties to avoid local court procedures. International arbitration has different rules than domestic arbitration, and has its own non-country-specific standards of ethical conduct. Most companies, especially in the developed world, are signatories of the New York Convention. Consequently, judgements can be enforced across the world.
In contrast, there is no equivalent treaty for the international recognition of court decisions with a large membership although a the Hague Convention of 30 June 2005 on Choice of Court Agreements entered into force in 2015 for the European Union and Mexico.

Similarly, no equivalent treaty exists so far for the international recognition of settlements achieved in mediation or conciliation: so far, a meeting of the UNCITRAL Working Group II in New York has taken place in February 2015 subsequent to a US proposal for that working group to develop a convention on the enforcement of conciliated settlement agreements for international commercial disputes. Within the EU, the enforceability of mediation agreements is ruled by Directive 2008/52/EC.

Several major international institutions and rule making bodies set out rules and appoint arbitrators. Arbitration has been used for centuries, including in antiquity, for the resolution of disputes between states and state-like entities. After a period of relative disuse, Jay's Treaty between the United States and Great Britain revived international arbitration as a means of resolving interstate disputes. The 1899 and 1907 Hague Conferences addressed arbitration as a mechanism for resolving state-to-state disputes, leading to the adoption of the Hague Conventions for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes.
The Conventions established the Permanent Court of Arbitration and a rudimentary institutional framework for international arbitration of interstate disputes. In recent years, international arbitration has been used to resolve a number of disputes between states or state-like entities.
In our series we present a selection of the arbitrations brought before the following international institutes:

• International Chamber of Commerce (ICC)
• International Court of Arbitration (ICA)
• Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA)
• London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA)
• World Intellectual Property Organization - Arbitration and Mediation Center
• International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID)
• World Trade Organization (WTO)
• Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (SCC)
• American Arbitration Association (AAA)
• Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS)
• CPr Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution
• National Arbitration Forum (NAF)
• Chamber of National and International Arbitration of Milan
• Inter-American Commercial Arbitration Commission (IACAC)
• Austrialian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (ACICA)
• International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR)

And the regional organizations:

• A. Commercial Arbitration and Mediation Center for the Americas (CAMCA)
• European Court of Arbitration
• Common Court of Justice and Arbitration of the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA)
• Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Commercial Arbitration Centre
• Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC)

The following volumes have been published so far:

Overview of the Collection:

The main-volumes