Originally from International Arbitration Law and Practice, Third Edition

PREVIEW

The past two decades have witnessed a remarkable flowering in the study of arbitration.  It has always  been  a subtle  and elusive  subject,  but until  quite recently  the intellectual  problems have been masked  by the relatively  small scale  of  the  disputes,  by the  fact  of  their  conduct  within  the confines  of individual national systems of law and practice, and by their strictly limited exposure to scrutiny. With the exception of a few notable international scholars few were interested in the articulation of a process which was considered to be of only local and workaday concern.

This landscape is now drastically transformed. Disputes are now often of a quite different order of magnitude. The availability of primary sources, and particularly of international sources, has been greatly enhanced, so that workers in the field can look beyond their own parochial and personal experience to see how others with equal experience but different cultural and legal backgrounds have conducted the arbitral process.