Originally from American Review of International Arbitration - ARIA

Preview Page

In April 1992, the Center for Public Resources, Inc. (“CPR”)1 issued its “Rules for Non-Administered Arbitration of International Disputes” (the “CPR Rules” or the “Rules”).2 The CPR Rules were prepared by the CPR’s Committee on International Arbitration3 as an alternative — indeed, the only alternative currently available — to the international ad hoc arbitration rules promulgated in 1976 by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (the “UNCITRAL Rules”). They were adapted, however, from the CPR’s own 1989 domestic “Rules for Non-Administered Arbitration of Business Disputes” (the “CPR Domestic Rules”), and differ in many significant respects from the UNCITRAL Rules as well as from the international arbitration rules of the leading international arbitral institutions.4
The Chair of the CPR Committee on International Arbitration has predicted that the CPR Rules “will be found by many to respond better to the practical realities of international commercial arbitration” than do the UNCITRAL Rules.5 With that prophecy in mind, this commentary will examine each of the CPR Rules in light of some of the issues that are likely to arise under those Rules and that have arisen under the corresponding provisions of the UNCITRAL Rules6 and of certain other Institutional Rules. As will appear from the discussion that follows, the CPR Rules certainly deserve to be considered seriously by parties wishing to provide for ad hoc arbitration of their international business disputes.