Originally from Arbitration Law of Turkey: Practice and Procedure

CHAPTER 15

APPLICABLE LAW

In almost all international arbitrations the tribunals have to deal with the issue of determining the substantive law governing the merits. While ordinary courts are usually obliged to apply their conflict-of-laws rules in relations with an international element, to determine and apply the applicable substantive law status, international arbitration have different or even opposite approaches.

The judge or arbitrator would be presumed to know the law whether it is foreign or domestic. But it is not uncommon for an expert in the particular foreign law to be brought in to give an opinion or to make an oral submission at the hearing.

International arbitration practice gives a greater emphasis on business practices to extremes where the arbitrators refuse to use any regulatory system and try to assess the dispute, for example, in accordance with “transnational rules” or lex mercatoria rules as a supposedly unified system of accepted international practice.