ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the role of the lex loci arbitri in international commercial arbitration and the extent to which judgments or orders made by a court of that state should influence a foreign court of another state in which the arbitral award is sought to be enforced. Much has been written about the concept of international commercial arbitration as an autonomous, anational institution the procedures of which are not subject to the constraints of national laws. Before discussing the opposing concepts of territoriality and party autonomy it is necessary to say a few words about the United Nations Convention on the Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards 1958 (the New York Convention). Where the parties have, expressly or by implication, selected a curial law, then to deny legal effect to that selection is not only to undermine the very principle of party autonomy on which the theory of the stateless award is based but to frustrate their legitimate expectations.
