• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.58
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• pp.99-124
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• 2013

International commercial arbitration is a specially formed mechanism for the final and binding settlement of disputes arisen between contracting parties regarding procedures, structures or other contractual relationship agreed by them. It is a resolution system which is processed autonomously by arbitrators who are appointed by contracting parties without involving the national court. If the contracting parties want to settle their disputes by arbitration, there must be a valid agreement. With a valid agreement, the most important concern is which law(called as the substantive law) should be applied in order to determine the rights and obligations of both contracting parties in relation to the dispute. At this point, the substantive law is really important because it is applied to the dispute itself directly during proceedings as well as it plays an crucial role in scrutiny and enforcement of arbitral awards. This article discusses about the substantive law under international commercial arbitration, specially focusing on the regulations of the ICC rules of arbitration, which is the most widely used all over the world and UNCITRAL Model law, which most countries' rule and laws are based on. By discussing how these rules and regulations should be interpreted and applied, it is expected to provide practical help to practitioners when they agree on an arbitration agreement.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.85-108
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• 2023

In international commercial arbitrations that arise from an international commercial contract, arbitral tribunals ruling on the merits of the arbitration apply the law governing the contract. The parties to contract are free to designate the law under the principle of parties autonomy. This paper examines this principle under the Korean Arbitration Act, and makes some legislative suggestions. For this purpose, this paper first discusses what is the scope of matters covered by the law governing the contract, what are the rules of conflict-of-laws for determining the law governing the contract, and what happens when the arbitral tribunal incorrectly applies the law governing the contract? Then, this paper further goes to examine issues such as the form of choice-of-law agreement, the explicit or implicit choice of law, the parties' ability to choose the rules of law including lex mercatoria, the change of choice-of-law agreement, the independence of choice-of-law clause.