Originally from World Arbitration And Mediation Review (WAMR)

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I. INTRODUCTION

The relationship between legal culture1 and the practice of international commercial arbitration has received increasing attention in recent years. International commercial arbitration is said to provide “a meeting point for different legal cultures, a place of convergence and interchange wherein practitioners from different backgrounds create new practices.”2 Indeed, in the context of globalization, arbitral proceedings are increasingly conducted in a uniform manner regardless of the place of arbitration and any governing national law.3 This article evaluates the recent hype surrounding the concept of an International Commercial Arbitration Culture (‘International Arbitration Culture’), which typically refers to the gradual convergence in norms, procedures, and expectations of participants in the arbitral process.4 Specifically, the author will argue throughout that International Arbitration Culture provides an unsatisfactory explanation or basis for the greater harmonization5 in arbitral proceedings, an opinion which runs contrary to several views expressed at the 1996 International Counsel for Commercial