Foreword

The closing decades of the twentieth century saw international commercial arbitration gain worldwide acceptance as the normal means of resolving international commercial disputes. National laws on arbitration have been modernized on all continents. International treaties on arbitration have been signed or adhered to with impressive success. Arbitration has become part of the curricula of large numbers of law schools. With the gradual removal of political and trade barriers and the rapid globalization of the world economy, new challenges have been created for arbitration institutions in response to the growing demand of parties for certainty and predictability, greater rapidity and flexibility as well as neutrality and efficacy in the resolution of international disputes.

Since the International Court of Arbitration was established in 1923, ICC arbitration has been constantly nourished by the experience gathered by the ICC International Court of Arbitration in the course of administering more than eleven thousand international arbitration cases, now involving each year parties and arbitrators from over 100 countries and from a diversity of legal, economic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

The present ICC Rules of Arbitration came into effect on 1 January 1998. They are the result of an intensive, worldwide consultation process and constitute the first major revision of the Rules in more than 20 years. The changes made are designed to reduce delays and ambiguities and to fill certain gaps, taking into account the evolution of arbitration practice. The basic features of the ICC arbitration system have not been altered, however, notably its universality and flexibility, as well as the central role played by the ICC Court in the administration of arbitral cases.

Every ICC arbitration is conducted by an arbitral tribunal with responsibility for examining the merits of the case and rendering a final award. Each year, ICC arbitrations are held in some 40 countries, in most major languages and with arbitrators of some 60 different nationalities. The work of those arbitral tribunals is monitored by the ICC Court, which meets weekly all year round. Currently composed of some 112 members from 73 countries, the Court organizes and supervises arbitrations held under the ICC Rules of Arbitration. The Court must remain constantly alert to changes in the law and the practice of arbitration in all parts of the world and must adapt its working methods to the evolving needs of parties and arbitrators. For the day-to-day management of cases in many languages, the ICC Court is supported by a Secretariat based at the headquarters of the International Chamber of Commerce, in Paris.

Although the ICC Rules of Arbitration have been especially designed for arbitrations in an international context, they may also be used for non-international cases.

The present publication contains only the 1998 ICC Rules of Arbitration. The 1988 ICC Rules of Optional Conciliation, with which they were previously published, have been replaced, as from 1 July 2001, by the ICC ADR Rules, which are published separately. This reedition of the 1998 Rules of Arbitration has allowed a number of typographical, syntactical and grammatical corrections to be made to the text as previously published. In addition, for the sake of consistency with the French version of the Rules, in the second sentence of Article 2(9) of Appendix III , the words "are expected" have been replaced by "have a duty ".

August 2001