Over the past two decades, various jurisdictions around the world have created new specialised domestic courts to manage international commercial disputes. Located in the Gulf region (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Qatar), in Asia (Singapore, China, Kazakhstan) and in Europe (Germany, France, the Netherlands), these courts enrich the current landscape of the resolution of international commercial disputes. In particular, they present themselves as alternatives to litigation before ordinary courts, on the one hand, and to international commercial arbitration on the other.
This book studies international commercial courts from a comparative perspective through various strands of inquiry. First, it offers a detailed analysis of the reasons for the creation of these courts and examines their jurisdictional, institutional and procedural features, answering questions such as: what are the disputes that international commercial courts hear? Who sits on the bench of these courts and who may argue cases? How do international commercial courts conduct their proceedings, and how different are the proceedings within ordinary courts? Second, to complement the first line of inquiry, the book scrutinises the motivations and/or constraints of jurisdictions that have decided against launching their own versions of ‘international commercial courts’. Finally, and most crucially, it systematically reviews the impact and the success of international commercial courts, addressing questions such as: what are the metrics of success, and is success wholly dependent on size of the docket? What role do the courts play in international commercial dispute resolution? What contributions can we expect from them in the future? Are these courts necessary? In addressing these questions, this text advances our understanding of the role of international commercial courts in the resolution of cross-border disputes.
