Originally from Arbitration Law and Practice in Latin America - Second Edition

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I. INTRODUCTION: ARBITRATION IN ARGENTINA HISTORY AND INFRASTRUCTURE

A. History and Current Legislation on Arbitration

Arbitration in Argentina has been mostly perceived as a procedural matter subject by constitutional mandate to the legislative jurisdiction of each of the 23 Argentine provinces (Articles 75(12) and 121 of the 1994 National Constitution, hereinafter “CN”). Therefore, the rules governing arbitration in Argentina have been traditionally confined to those found in the code of civil procedure of each province, which for more than a century and a half have been governing both domestic and international arbitraiton. (Código Procesal Civil y Comercial de la Nación, hereinafter “CPCCN”). This “monist” approach to arbitration was drastically with the adoption in 2015 of Argentina’s Civil and Commercial Code (Código Civil y Comercial de la Nación, hereinafter “CCCN” and three years later, in 2018, with the adoption of Argentina’s first federal law on international commercial arbitration ((Ley de Arbitraje Comercial Internacional, hereinafter “LACI”).

Thus, Argentina currently follows a “dualist” approach towards the regulation of arbitration. Domestic arbitration continues to be governed by the rules of procedure found in the CPCCN (Arts. 736–773) and the codes of civil procedure of each province. These rules, however, must be read in conjunction with those governing the arbitration agreement (the “contract of arbitration”) found in Articles Arts. 1649–1655 CCCN. International commercial arbitration, on the other hand, is “exclusively” governed by the LACI. The following discussion will be primarily focused on the provisions of the LACI governing international commercial arbitration, with occasional comparative references to the regime of domestic arbitration found in the CCCN and the CPCCN. Argentina’s legal culture is basedon the civil law tradition.