Originally from Mandatory Rules in International Arbitration

I. Introduction

In a previous chapter, Alexander Greenawalt and I defined mandatory rules in the context of international commercial arbitration as rules that “arise outside the contract, apply regardless of what the parties agree to, and are typically designed to protect public interests that the state will not allow the parties to waive.”1 While mandatory rules encompass a broad range of laws, in the context of international commercial arbitration the scholarly debate centers primarily on “substantive laws that may affect the enforceability of contracts or otherwise may regulate the transaction subject to arbitration.”2