Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: Arbitration has evolved as a preeminent conflict resolution process in international commerce, largely because it affords some escape from uncertainty for the foreign trader faced with the diversity of national legal systems.There have existed for many years nongovernmental institutional systems for international arbitration, and they have been widely utilized.However, a major evolution occurred when the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) developed a Model Law on Commercial Arbitration.This Model Law offers a universal law of arbitration.It is designed for incorporation into the municipal law of the nation state and offers the greatest promise to date that international arbitration will be respected by local courts as an independent dispute resolution process.This promise is important.Local arbitration laws and procedures have varied considerably among different nations and different institutional systems and are often obscure or unexpected to a foreign party.Furthermore, local courts have not always been friendly to international arbitration.The UNCITRAL Model Law, echoing the purposes of UNCITRAL itself, is designed to promote uniformity of international trade law on a global basis, affording a special avenue of predictability by establishing enforceable uniform practices and procedures.On December 11, 1985, the United Nations General Assembly urged members to give serious thought to adopting the Model Law.'In the United States, however, quite apart from questions of specific amendment of the Model Law, the question of adoption of the Model Law meets the somewhat unique, but inevitable, issues posed by our federal system.Fundamental to the question of adoption of the Model Law in the United States is whether the adoption should be through state or federal law or through some parallel of state and federal law.
Authors: Jack I. Garvey, Totton Heffelfinger
Institution: University of San Francisco
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W87520569