An Exposition of the International and Commercial Concepts in International Commercial Arbitration

Abstract

It has become common to speak of international commercial arbitration but there is no clear concept of what is meant by the terms international and commercial. Arbitration generally is a form of dispute resolution with a long history; from its ancient times, it has generally evolved into a method of resolving disputes that is popular across nations, jurisdictions, and legal traditions. What renders an arbitration ‘commercial’ and whenit is internationalare the focus of this paper. This paper adopted the doctrinal research methodology with the aim of explaining the meaning of the concepts - ‘international’ and ‘commercial’ which are the two key concepts in international commercial arbitration. The objective of the work is to help in differentiating or distinguishing between internationalarbitration and domestic arbitration and to know when arbitration is commercial and when it is noncommercial. It has been discovered that the understanding of these two key terms will help in a better understanding of international commercial arbitration. This is because an arbitration that is considered international and commercial under one lex arbitri might not necessarily qualify as international and commercial under a different lex arbitri.