Originally from American Review of International Arbitration - ARIA

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  "The concept of party autonomy gives the parties the flexibility necessary to structure the procedure in a way best suited to their needs. It is this flexibility that has led to the success of commercial arbitration and made it the preferred means of resolving international commercial disputes." M. Scott Donahey** $lt

"The wishes of the parties themselves are not always served by arbitral autonomy." William W. Park***

I. INTRODUCTION

The primacy of party autonomy is usually regarded as the hallmark of contemporary arbitral legislation. In the past decade, the drive for maximum party autonomy has become the central theme for the ever growing number of legislatures that have discovered international arbitration[1] as a lucrative source of revenues. In devising new arbitration laws to be used as "marketing strategies"[2] in the worldwide competition for dispute resolution through international arbitration, domestic lawmakers seek to implement the concept of the "specificity" ("specificiteit," "Spezifizität," "specificità" or "spécificité") of international economic arbitration. Whether used to build up a country's image as an arbitral forum[3] or as a means to maintain and improve the good reputation of a country with a long-standing tradition in international economic arbitration,[4] the term is making its way around the world.[5] The term denotes the special character