Originally from the American Review of International Arbitration

PEACE THROUGH LAW USING INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION

Historiography—simply understood as the study of historical writings and historians’ methods —is as much about the subjectivity of the historian’s perspectives as it is about the objectivity of histories examined. Notwithstanding its title, Dr. Mikaël Schinazi’s book, The Three Ages of International Commercial Arbitration, is in no way a standard chronological history of international commercial arbitration,  so much as it actually is a progressive legal history  unraveling the pulse of ideas that gave international commercial arbitration its global ubiquity today.  This book is a significant masterpiece of legal historiography, treading the interacting institutional, sociological, political, economic, and legal orders and practices within international commercial arbitration.  Written as a PhD dissertation under the supervision of the late eminent arbitrator and arbitration counsel, Professor Emmanuel Gaillard, the book frames the transitions and transformations in the “Age of Aspirations” (1780s–1920s, where international arbitration began to be seen as a viable parallel private law dispute resolution mechanism, less judicialized than courts),  the “Age of Institutionalization” (1920–1950, where under the auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce and its Court of Arbitration a distinct legal and rules-based framework emerged for international commercial arbitration),  and the “Age of Autonomy” (late 1950s to the present, which reflects the technical professionalization of international commercial arbitration and the ideological divides on lex mercatoria and the existence of an arbitral legal order).