Thank you for your especially insightful response. (Your reference to US constitutional matters brings back pleasant memories, as a student, of studying the profound and enlightening impact of eloquent US Supreme Court judgments on Irish constitutional law in the area of personal rights)

One can only hope that the Court of Justice of the European Communities will also adopt a more receptive approach to international authority (and as a consequence, perhaps a less blinkered view) in cases involving the NYC and other arbitration-related conventions than that manifested in the recent West Tankers judgment (on which I have commented elsewhere in this forum).

Best regards,

John

Many thanks for your thoughtful comment.

Some of the current members of the Supreme Court have famously been skeptical about reliance on foreign authority, in contrast to previous Courts (one can think back both to the days of Justice Story, but much more recently as well, to Justice White). That skepticism has, however, been focussed on constitutional matters, where different considerations are at play than in either statutory or other private law contexts. And, as you suggest, taking foreign authority into account where the subject matter is international makes particular sense, all the more so when one deals with an international convention (NYC or Inter-American Convention) where uniformity is an express goal. I suspect, fairly strongly, that the Supreme Court will be much more receptive and attentive to foreign developments in the international arbitration context than in domestic constitutional matters. In any case, the federal Courts of Appeals and District Courts have thusfar shown a distinct receptivity to considering foreign authority/approaches in the international arbitration context – again, different considerations are at play here than in more domestic settings.

Best regards,
Gary

I offer a comment and pose a question.

First, congratulations on the publication of what is undoubtedly a masterful treatment of the complex, multi-faceted, facinating and evolving area of international commercial arbitration.

Second, while I agree with your assertion that “treatments of international commercial arbitration in different national legal systems are not diverse, unrelated phenomena, but rathera common corpus of international arbitration law which has global application”, I do wonder about the reception/(re-?)integration of this corpus by the domestic systems that contribute to its remarkable development. I am thinking in particular of the general, apparent hostility of the US Supreme Court to the influence of foreign jurisprudence on US domestic matters (based on perceptions of US exceptionalism?). Or is the area of arbiration a notable exception to this apparent barrier?

Kind regards,

John

PS: If works such as yours contribute significantly in breathing life into/animating such a corpus of law – perhaps new arbitration blogs such as this are corpuscles that help sustain it?!