Originally from World Arbitration And Mediation Review (WAMR)

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THAT RARE BIRD:

NON-NATIONAL LEGAL STANDARDS AS
APPLICABLE LAW IN INTERNATIONAL
COMMERCIAL ARBITRATION
Felix Dasser*

I. INTRODUCTION

It is common practice in international trade for the
parties to refer not to the law of one or other state but
directly to the rules of an international convention such as
the Vienna Convention of 11 April 1980 on contracts for
the international sale of goods, to the customs of
international trade, to the general principles of law, to the
lex mercatoria or to recent private codifications such as
the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial
Contracts.1

Is it really?

Judging from the number of conferences and publications on
transnational law and the like, the answer seems to be a
resounding “Yes”. Prof. Klaus Peter Berger’s ground-breaking
TransLex website lists 927 academic books and articles on, or
related to, the topic thus showing extensive academic awareness.2
However, as most readers are likely to confirm, one’s own
practice is almost eerily lacking any significant number of
commercial arbitration cases where the applicable law is a nonstate
one: international law, general principles of (international)