INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL ARBITRATION IN INDIA

Abstract

With the advent of globalization, the world has become a global village. Business organizations have expanded themselves beyond borders and hence, there has been a real time increase in cross-border transactions. Agreements and contracts executed between the commercial organizations many times go ugly, thus, giving rise to disputes which are not within the confines of municipal law of a particular country, because the transactions are ‘cross-border’ in nature. Adjudication of cross-border business disputes demand expertise of a different sort, especially when the organizations in dispute hail from nations following different legal systems, as for example common law system and civil law system. Usually, as a matter of practice, all agreements executed between corporations inter-se, to bring to fore a common purpose, have three covenants, worth stressing, in particular; one is that of the ‘governing law’, second is the ‘jurisdiction clause’, and third is the ‘arbitration clause’. The ‘governing law’ stipulation states, as to law of which country shall be taken recourse to, if and when deals between the international corporations go sour. The ‘jurisdiction clause’ states, as to courts of which country shall have the ‘say’ in the matter in dispute, at hand. The ‘arbitration clause’ states, how the disputes are to be resolved between the corporations before they are formally brought before the court of law for adjudication; arbitration clause speaks of mechanisms which are in the nature of ‘out-of-the-court-settlement-of-disputes’, such as: mediation, conciliation and arbitration.