LibGuides: International Commercial Arbitration: Treaties, Conventions, and Other Sources of Law

Interpretive Resources

Here are some links to online and print materials, which may be helpful in looking at some of the various treaties.

Enforcing Arbitration Awards Under the New York Convention
A 1999 UN publication, which offers insight as to experience and prospects of the enforcement of arbitration agreements under the New York Convention.
Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards: A Global Commentary on the New York Convention, Kronke, Nacimiento, et al. (ed)
Provides commentary on each of the articles from the New York Convention through compilation of leading court decisions on the enforcement of arbitral awards.
Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards
Contains much historical information about the New York Convention. This document is in pdf format.
NYC Convention Decisions
Kluwer Arbitration permits researchers to look for convention decisions by article, topic, and jurisdiction.

Online Treaties and Conventions

Treaties are important to the field of ICA, especially in terms of the enforcement of arbitral agreements. The most well-known treaty in this field is perhaps the New York Convention; however, researchers may find regional or other treaties of use. Citations below to Redfern refer to the Redfern & Hunter on International Arbitration, 5th Edition (2009).

New York Convention
Drafted in 1958, it has now been ratified by more than 140 countries, regardless of the arbitration rules under which the arbitration was conducted (Redfern, p. 633). Also available online through Kluwer Arbitration.
Panama Convention
Links to the Kluwer Arbitration text of the Panama Convention. Also available online for free at http://www.sice.oas.org/dispute/comarb/iacac/iacac2e.asp (website also shows ratification).
Washington Convention (ICSID)
Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes Between States and Nationals of Other States. There are 143 contracting States to the Washington Convention (Redfern, 633).
United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), Vienna
Pace University has provided the full-text version of the United Nations Convention for the International Sale of Goods, Vienna (1980).
Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters
NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)
Link to the final version of the NAFTA text.
Treaties Available from Westlaw
Look for "Conventions" under the International Arbitration page.
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Text of commercial arbitration treaties and related documents from the following databases: American Society of International Law (ASIL), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, Uruguay Round (GATT), and (European Union Legislation (EU-LEG).
United States Treaties
Find more treaties in Congress.gov, a free resource from the Library of Congress designed to provide access to United States federal legislation.
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Congress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information. The site provides access to accurate, timely, and complete legislative information for Members of Congress, legislative agencies, and the public. It is presented by the Library of Congress (LOC) using data from the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, the Government Publishing Office, Congressional Budget Office, and the LOC's Congressional Research Service.
UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts
Link to the English version of the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts. This link is to the 2016 edition.
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the 2016 edition of the UNIDROIT Principles, like the 2010 edition, consists of 211 Articles (as opposed to the 120 Articles of the 1994 edition and the 185 Articles of the 2004 edition) and covers virtually all the most important topics of general contract law. For ease of comparison, the 2016 edition contains a table of correspondence of the articles of the four editions.

The main objective of the fourth edition of the UNIDROIT Principles is to take better into account the special needs of long-term contracts. To do so, the content of the 2010 edition has been altered only marginally: only six provisions have been amended, i.e. the Preamble and Articles 1.11, 2.1.14, 5.1.7, 5.1.8, and 7.3.7. Indeed, the majority of alterations were made to the Comments, in particular on the Preamble (amendments to Comment 2) and Articles 1.11 (addition of a new Comment 3), 2.1.14 (amendments to Comments 1-3 and addition of a new Comment 4), 2.1.15 (amendments to Comment 2 and addition of a new Comment 3), 4.3 (amendments to Comment 3 (which has become Comment 4) and addition of a new Comment 3), 4.8 (amendments to Comments 1-3), 5.1.3 (amendments to the Comment (which has become Comment 1) and addition of a new Comment 2), 5.1.4 (addition of a new Comment 3), 5.1.7 (amendments to Comments 2-3), 5.1.8 (amendments to the Comment (which has become Comment 1) and addition of a new Comment 2), 7.1.7 (addition of a new Comment 5), 7.3.5 (amendments to Comment 3 and addition of a new Comment 4), 7.3.6 (amendments to Comment 1), and 7.3.7 (amendments to Comments 1-2).
Hague Principles on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts
Approved March 19, 2015.

Researching Treaties

Go further with your treaty research. Here are some links that will help with treaty-specific research.

ASIL--Public International Law
Although this guide covers more than just treaties, there is a nice section on researching and locating treaties. Other international research guides are also available on this page.
International Investment Agreements Navigator
Also from UNCTAD, this site provides a nice search engine for use specific to locating bilateral treaties. Simply click on a nation to view the collection of treaties. After clicking on a nation, look to the far right to see if the full-text is available (may be in languages other than English).
Law and Practice of Investment Treaties, Newcombe and Paradell (2009)