4 - The Arbitration Clause Saga in French Law and the Emergence of a Special Regime for International Commercial Arbitration

Summary

While Chapter 3 sought to situate international commercial arbitration in the broader context of international adjudication, this chapter focuses on a specific context – that of France. It uses a key concept, the arbitration clause, to explore a wider set of attitudes toward international commercial arbitration that prevailed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first part of this chapter explores the movement from renewal to anxiety in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France – the largely pro-arbitration regime of the French Revolution and the current of hostility toward arbitration that emerged during the Consulate and the First Empire. The second part of this chapter explores the pendulum movement from anxiety to renewal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This seminal period for arbitration saw French legislators recognize the validity of arbitration clauses in commercial contracts and create a special regime for international commercial arbitration. In short, this chapter is about the “saga” of the arbitration clause, which offers a unique means of exploring the dynamic of renewal and anxiety in the Age of Aspirations.