Introduction

Exclusive jurisdiction clauses are all very well but who knows whether a foreign court will see them simply as a usurpation of that court's authority? Who knows what a foreign court will do when asked to recognise and enforce the winner's court order? Conflicting conflicts of laws rules, confusing concepts of public policy, confused judges and bad coffee make international litigation a form of jurisprudential roulette. Arbitration is supposed to resolve these uncertainties. The theory is that the New York Convention and the Panama Convention (in the Americas) provide a simple ...