ABSTRACT
The scholarly study of international commercial arbitration practices is of vital importance in understanding globalised law and economies. Currently, disputes in the transnational commercial context are overwhelmingly resolved through arbitration, rather than through litigation (Drahozal 2000). Those disputes frequently involve enormous sums of money, often enough to have significant impact on national economies. As long ago as 1996, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) reported that more than 12% of international commercial arbitrations were for awards exceeding 10 million dollars (ICC Bulletin 1997); by 2012, the ICC was reporting that almost 10% of international commercial arbitration cases were worth more than 90 million dollars (Gerbay 2014). In the two-year span from 2009 through 2010, a total of 113 international commercial arbitration awards exceeded one billion dollars (Gluck 2012). By any accounting, international commercial arbitration can have major implications, both for individual participants and for national economies. In addition, since many international commercial disputes involve state-owned enterprises or even states themselves as parties, such disputes often have implications for international relations between countries. Thus, in order to have an accurate understanding of contemporary transnational trade, finance, banking, and securities—not to mention global multilateral international politics—one must, of necessity, take into account the structure and practices of international commercial arbitration.
