Export Trade by Professor Clive M. Schmitthoff, and Commercial Law in a Changing Economic Climate by Professor Clive M. Schmitthoff

Abstract

The opening lines of the judgment of Edmund Davies J in Price v. Milner ([1966] 1 W.L.R. 1235) relate that ‘many years ago a top-hatted old gentleman used to parade outside these law courts carrying, a placard which bore the stirring injunction ‘arbitrate – don't litigate!’. The same sentiment is echoed, all be it more elegantly, by Professor Schmitthoff in these two books. Schmitthoff offers the general opinion that arbitration as compared to court litigation, offers businessmen substantial advantages in terms of speed, privacy, cost and relative finality. That the assertion may not be quite the truism it appears, in relation to technical as opposed to merely quality arbitrations, has been suggested by at least one senior judicial figure (see The Hon Mr Justice Kerr [1980] J.B.L. 164) but Schmitthoff's advocacy of arbitration as a more appropriate mode of international commercial dispute resolution is based on a more fundamental credo...