Originally from American Review of International Arbitration - ARIA

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There is always disputed territory. It is the interaction within this
substantial administration that determines the random walk of the
world: everything interesting happens at the borders between domains
of power.1

Any private mechanism of dispute resolution – wherever it falls on the
spectrum running from consensual settlement all the way through binding
arbitration – depends in the last resort on public sanctions and the public
monopoly of force. It is in this sense at the very least that we can speak of a
hierarchical, or vertical, relationship between courts and arbitral tribunals. At the
same time, though, in our world of comparative advantage, of global ventures,
and connected markets, transactions – and disputes – will routinely flow over
national boundaries; they will inescapably involve parties of different nationalities
– distant from each other not only geographically but culturally and politically2 –
and will implicate different sovereign interests. And here – when we add a
horizontal dimension – is where things truly become interesting: In this
“Westphalian” world, conflict and competition between national jurisdictions,
with overlapping and yet plausible claims to supervise the process, become
inevitable; here is where the demands of tolerance become strained. And where
our powers of systematization are truly put to the test.

Because arbitrators do not at least for the moment have armed marshals at
their personal disposition, we must at some point look to those that do – that is, to
a state court charged with assessing whether to lend, or to withhold, its support to
the arbitration process (or, if need be, to interpose itself between private
individuals and mere officious interlopers with no plausible claim to power over
them). We may (at least some of us may) cherish the vision of a mechanism for
mercantile self-government that is entirely self-contained – even autarkic, one
independent of local peculiarities, and with a claim to universal recognition. But
(thank goodness) for the moment such an ideal lacks any organized, permanent,
hierarchical structure, any supranational standing bureaucracy, that could make it
a concrete reality.3