The relationship between
Arbitration and Court Litigation
(history, Prunier case)
Created by Drahomíra Fridrichová, Šárka
Malinovská, Dušan Valent, Jana Vávrová
Introduction
origin: lost in obscurity
not clear boundaries
all ages of recorded history
Ancient times
• Middle East
• Tulpunnaya v. Killi
• King Solomon
• Egypt
• arrangements in funerary trusts, 2 500 B.C.
Ancient Greece and Rome
 Greece
 private and commercial disputes
 arbitration = natural process
 Greek Courts, lack of clear boundaries
 Rome
 compromissum, penalty
 Post-Classical period – pacta sunt servanda
From Middle ages…
guilds – mandatory arbitration
What would you say,
penalty clauses
popular or not?
influence of canonical law and Roman law
arbitral deeds
...to modern era
• worldwide spread of arbitration
• fragmentality of arbitration in each
country
England
 arbitration older than the common law system
 1698 Arbitration Act
 promoting commerce
 BUT limited by courts
 Civil Procedure Act (1833)
 improvement: arbitration agreements could not be revoked,
witnesses under oath
 Common Law Procedure Act (1854)
 comprehensive arbitration statute
 extensive judicial review of the substance of arbitrator’s
awards
 1889 Arbitration Act
 widely adopted throughout the Commonwealth countries
France
• Edict of 1560
• use of mandatory arbitration for resolving commercial
disputes
• French Revolution
• many changes  arbitration as a threat
• numerous restrictions
Prunier case, 1843
• validity of an arbitration clause
• “clause compromissoire” (in advance of a dispute) v.
“compromis”
• court´s holding – invalid: the names of the arbitrators
not given
• grounds for decision – protection of weaker parties
(adhesion contract)
Prunier case
• mistrust of arbitration
• Prunier rule
= nullifying all arbitration clauses concluded before
the dispute
• distinct legal regime of international and internal
arbitration
Around Europe
Austria-Hungary
permanent arbitration panel by Commercial and
industrial Chamber
1895 – civil procedure act
 responsive to arbitration
Czechoslovakia –this act into national law in 1918
Germany, Belgium, Netherlands
open to arbitration (unlike France)
United States
• earliest days of European settlement
• difficulties resolving disputes
• New Amsterdam (New York)
• Dutch settlers: mandatory and consensual arbitration.
• different development (world business center)
• colonies
• hostility towards arbitration until 1833
• 1925 Federal Arbitration Act
• hostility fully overcome in the early 20th century
• in force until today
Internation Commercial
Arbitration
arbitration = rival of national courts
→ arbitration developed on international level
the growth: continental Europe in the 1920s
Geneva Convention
& Geneva Protocol
Geneva Protocol on Arbitration Clauses (1923)
Geneva Convention for the Execution of
Foreign Arbitral Awards (1927)
New York Convention (1958)
recognition and enforcement of
foreign arbitral awards
referral by a court to arbitration
www.newyorkconvention.org
UNCITRAL Model Law
• United Nations Commission on International Trade Law
•
•
•
•
•
rules acceptable worldwide
great practical value
updated information on case law and enactments
assistance in law reform projects
seminars on uniform commercial law
• zákon č.216/1994 Sb. ze dne 1. listopadu 1994 o rozhodčím
řízení a o výkonu rozhodčích nález
Systems of justice
• delegated: legitimacy - the state justice system
• parallel: separate tracks of business dispute
and formal state justice
• abandoned: little role of judicial institutions
Today’s reality
A) less supportive national legislations
▪ low practical experience
▪ potential to support v. readiness of courts
B) supportive
 Europe, North America, parts of Asia
Thank You for Your ATTENTION!
Sources

Bibliography:
VÁRADY, Tibor; BÁRCELO, John J.; VON MEHREN, Arthur T. International Commercial Arbitration : A Transnational
perspective. 3rd edition. St. Paul : Thomson/West, 2006. 931 s. ISBN 0-314-16062-0.
Dezalay, Yves, and Bryant G. Garth : Dealing in Virtue. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Ch. 10, pp. 197218.
EMERSON, Frank D. History of Arbitration Practice and Law. Clevelant St. Law Review. 1970, 19, s. 155-165.
WOLAVER, Earl S. . The Historical Background of Commercial Arbitration. The University of Pennsylvania Law
Review. 1934 , 83, 2, s. 132-146 . Dostupný také z WWW: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3308189?seq=3>.
DE VRIES, Henry P. . International Commercial Arbitration: A Contractual Substitute for National Courts. Tulane
Law Review. 1982-1983, 57, s. 42.
Settlement of Disputes by Arbitration in Fifteenth-Century England. Law and History Review. 1984 , 2, s. 21-43.
Dostupný také z WWW: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/743909>.
JONES, William C. An Inquiry into the History of the Adjudication of Mercantile Disputes in Great Britain and the
United States. The University of Chicago Law Review. 1958 , 25, 3, s. 445-464. Dostupný také z WWW:
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/1598356>.
SOIA, Mentschikoff. Commercial Arbitration. Columbia Law Review. 1961, 61, s. 846-870.
ROZEHNALOVÁ, Nadežda. Rozhodčí řízení v medzinárodním a vnitrostátním obchodním styku. 2. Praha : Aspi,
Wolter Kluwer, 2008. 388 s. ISBN 978-80-7357-324-9
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Online sources:
www.uncitral.com; newyorkconvention.com