Recently I was asked by the government of the United Arab Emirates to
advise it on the drafting of a new arbitration statute, which caused me to reflect

on the provisions which, in my view, should be incorporated into such a statute.

Most other commentators who have grappled with this question have suggested

using the 1985 UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial

Arbitration (the “Model Law”) as a starting point – a suggestion with which I

agree.

 

However, there are reasons why it might not be a wise decision to simply

incorporate verbatim the provisions of the Model Law into a new statute. For one,

the Model Law was designed to address the needs of international and

commercial dispute resolution, and although many of its provisions have been

used by states with respect to purely domestic and non-commercial forms of

arbitration, there are a number of policy issues that arise in the context of the

resolution of domestic disputes that in the view of some states might require

provisions not found in the Model Law.

 

A second reason is that the Model Law does not address a number of

important issues that ideally should be addressed by a state in order for arbitration

to be an attractive form of dispute resolution. It is telling that neither England nor

France – two of the most important centers for international arbitration – adopted

the Model Law when they recently revised their arbitration statutes. Rather, there

is agreement among a number of international arbitration experts that the Model

Law, as drafted in 1985, failed to address some issues pertinent to the arbitration

process and that an ideal statute should include provisions dealing with some of

these ancillary issues.

 

Indeed, as I have noted in my book, Judicial Benchbook on International

Arbitration: A Guide for Judges in the Middle East,1 two of the most prominent

arbitration experts, Lord Michael Mustill and Stephen Boyd, have suggested that

additions and changes to the provisions of the Model Law may be warranted.

They noted in their treatise on arbitration that “[t]he Model Law is . . . far from

comprehensive. This was inevitable, given the need for a text on which the

representatives of many states could concur. Its promoters were, we believe, right

to limit their aims, and the agreed text is a notable achievement. The fact remains,