This thesis examines the role that national courts play across the different stages of international commercial arbitration. While the arbitration is designed as a private and autonomous alternative dispute resolution mechanism, it cannot function without the support and oversight of the very courts it seeks to replace. The analysis is grounded in the two most widely adopted international instruments in this field: the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, and the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration of 1985. The New York Convention has been ratified by Slovenia, whereas the UNCITRAL Model Law has largely been replicated in the Slovenian Arbitration Act, making both instruments particularly relevant also for Slovenia.
The thesis follows the chronology of an arbitration proceeding and reviews the role of state courts at four stages of arbitration. The thesis identifies a dual function that courts perform throughout the process: a supportive function, through which they assist in carrying out proceedings that the tribunal could not complete alone, and a supervisory function, through which they safeguard the foundational principles of the legal order, including procedural fairness and public policy. Grounds for refusing recognition and enforcement are interpreted narrowly by courts and deliberately stop short of reviewing the merits of the tribunal's decision.
The central synthesis is that party autonomy and judicial intervention are not opposites but complements. Without courts, arbitration could not deliver on its core promises of speed, effectiveness and enforceability. Therefore, rather than undermining, (limited) judicial intervention legitimises international commercial arbitration.
|
