ABSTRACT
As arbitration practitioners increasingly traverse diverse arbitration venues, exchange practices, and participate in joint conferences, a greater degree of information-sharing is promoting harmonization within key areas of international practice. At the same time, unique values and objectives practiced within diverse regions regarding the aims and purposes of arbitration will need to be explicitly probed in order to better understand the origins and roots of diversity that enrich the range of arbitral techniques used across regions. Growing convergence of perspectives regarding the practice of arbitration is taking place worldwide. This is refl ected in a high level of uniformity within survey data pertaining to the reasons why arbitration is selected, and particular procedural rules pertaining to arbitrator selection, prehearing directives, party statement of claims and defenses, oral hearings, use of experts, taking of evidence, and issuing of awards following the promulgation of conventions such as the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods and the UN Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration. Simultaneously, the fi ndings indicate that in some key areas, distinction persists with respect to aspects of international arbitration that appear to be region-specifi c, such as the degree of settlement intervention across regions.
