Part IV Selected Issues for Further Study, E Comparing Arbitration and Court Selection, 3 When and Why Arbitration Matters

There is little use in going to law with the devil while the court is held in hell. Humphrey O’Sullivan1 More than one thoughtful business manager has contemplated the prospect of litigation abroad in terms analogous to those used by the nineteenth-century diarist quoted above. When an international venture goes awry, the dramatically disagreeable consequences can often include the “home-town justice” of the other side’s national courts: unfamiliar procedures, perhaps a foreign language, and in some countries a xenophobic or even corrupt judge. The reality of...