Examination of Legal Theories on the Nature of International Commercial Arbitration with an Approach to the Source of the Arbitrator’s Authority
Keywords:
arbitrator’s authority, nature of international commercial arbitration, territorial theory, jurisdictional theory, delocalisation theoryAbstract
The institution of arbitration is a universal establishment rooted in the agreement between the parties and must be administered and organized in accordance with the principles of contract. However, determining the nature of this institution has always been subject to significant challenges and divergent views among scholars in this field. The arbitration agreement, over the past two decades, has increasingly been recognized as an ambiguous phenomenon in the procedural relations of arbitral disputes, which has led to the development of various theories to explain its nature. The primary source of ambiguity lies in the origin of the arbitrators’ authority, with some scholars considering this authority to be “contractual” and others viewing it as “jurisdictional,” each carrying different implications and consequences. The present study seeks to examine judicial theories concerning international commercial arbitration. Specifically, the article aims to answer the question: how can the nature of the arbitration institution be accepted within the framework of judicial theories? In response to this question, the study advances the hypothesis that under the judicial theory, the arbitrator should be regarded as a “judge,” and arbitral awards should be deemed to have been issued by the national court.
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