Das Neue Recht der Schiedsgerichtsbarkeit (The New German Arbitration Law) edited by Klaus-Peter Berger

Abstract

Now it will be safe to arbitrate in Germany. Before the 1998 New German Arbitration Law, it was no accident that Europe's finest procedural lawyers were German. Both Germans and non-Germans needed them. Foreign lawyers comfortable with ad hoc arbitration in Paris, Geneva, Stockholm and London shied at German arbitration. There was something ‘of the night’ about it. And for a country rich in international arbitrators, it seemed odd that so much of their work was directed abroad. Now, at the dawn of the new millennium, a new era has begun for German arbitration; and once again, it is the UNCITRAL Model Law which has brought a great trading nation into those legal communities favourable to commercial arbitration, both in reality and (as importantly) foreign perception. Arbitration is now undoubtedly the most popular form of dispute resolution system for transnational trade in every advanced economy around the world; and the Model Law has become the yardstick by which every international user measures an arbitral forum. And yet the New German Law, like the Model Law, is a subtle text. It requires explanation. No user of the Model Law can exist, for long, without his Broches or Holtzmann & Neuhaus, just as it would be delinquent to use the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules without at close hand a Sanders or van Hof. And even the English, with their lengthy New 1996 Act, need the detailed ABC commentaries from their Departmental Advisory Committee (DAC) to inform them of its meaning. Likewise the New German Law alone, however close to the language of the Model Law, would not suffice to assuage the natural concerns of the foreign user unused to international commercial arbitration in Germany.