Local law and private rules of procedure in connection with International Commercial Arbitration

Abstract

To remind himself that there is nothing new under the sun, the student of international arbitration need but reflect on the fact that the phenomenon of delocalised arbitration had been discovered long before it appeared as one of the major topics of the last decade. The case came from Switzerland, where a court with beguiling simplicity declared that ‘the arbitration procedure … is entirely governed by the will of the parties' and that their reference to the ICC Rules of Arbitration overrode even the mandatory provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Canton of Vaud. The year was 1948. And the commentator was Frédéric Eisemann, then in the early years of his long and distinguished tenure as Secretary-General of the ICC Court of Arbitration. The commentary, here republished with permission, first appeared in Volume 4 Number 4 Arbitration Journal (1949) of the American Arbitration Association. The reader's attention is drawn to the last words of Mr Eisemann's commentary, anticipating ‘a uniform arbitration law’ to be adopted by governments worldwide. Such a law – albeit perhaps not destined to be uniform – saw the light of day on 21 June 1985, and appears elsewhere in this issue: the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration.