General Principles of Law in International Commercial Arbitration

The arbitral tribunal in an international arbitration usually is accorded great freedom to assess and select the applicable substantive law when the parties themselves did not make a choice of law. The authors discuss what the effect hereof is on the role of the Unidroit Principles within the context of international commercial arbitration. Thereto, they explore the following issues. Firstly, they examine when the Unidroit Principles might serve as applicable law and they provide an overview of the different methods generally used by arbitrators for selecting the appropriate applicable law in an arbitration procedure. Secondly, they investigate the role of the Unidroit Principles in the interpretation and supplementation of national law. They then further examine the use of the Unidroit Principles for the interpretation and supplementation of international uniform law. In the margin of their research, the authors also touch upon the issues of the growing acceptance of the application of a-national law in international arbitration the scepticism of legal scholars as to the application of 'lexmercatoria'; and the use of the Unidroit Principles as an instrument for interpretation and supplementation of the international uniform law, such as the CISG.