Arbitration agreement is the key to solving disputes before arbitration and the law that governs it has an important impact on its validity and interpretation. Parties in practice often do not choose the law governing the arbitration agreement, therefore the courts and arbitral tribunal need to determine the law applicable to the arbitration agreement. There are different ways and approaches to determine the law applicable to the arbitration agreement and the case law is torn between the law of the seat of arbitration and the law of the main contract.
The objectives of the Master's Thesis are to present why the choice of law governing the arbitration agreement is an important issue in international arbitration, what are the consequences if the parties do not choose the law and which are the key principles that the courts and tribunals use when determining the law applicable to the arbitration agreement. I will firstly present different conflict of law rules and legal doctrines and principles such as, separability doctrine and the validation principle.
In cases where the law is not chosen by the parties, the law of the main contract or the law of the seat of arbitration are most often applied, thus I will explain in separate subsections the approaches and opinions of practitioners for the choice of each law. Different views of the courts will be presented and I will conclude by outlining the implications of the choice of a particular law as the law applicable to the arbitration agreement.
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