Chapter 7 The Role of Private International Law: UNIDROIT and the Geneva Conventions on Arbitration

As is obvious from the title, the term ‘private international law’ is not intended to be synonymous with ‘conflict of laws’ but, in the North American tradition, as the entirety of international law not relating to state-tostate relationships. It is clear that World War I and its aftermath mark key moments in the development of organized and institutionalized research in the fields of comparative law, conflict of laws, the law of dispute resolution and transnational commercial law. To a varying extent they were driven by economic expansion and rivalry, the war and, following its catastrophic outcome, the quest for peace. For many post-WWI lawyers, one of the main functions of harmonized law was to build and maintain this peace by fostering an orderly and universally beneficial commercial exchange. As I used to tell visitors, this historic peace-making and peacebuilding function is still an integral part of UNIDROIT’s present-day mission. Within this historical development, the years 1916 and 1926 are particularly significant. The former sees the founding of the first two academic institutions with staff and funding devoted exclusively to private international law, that is, the institutes affiliated with the universities in Heidelberg and Munich. In 1926, at the national level, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin (now Max Planck Institute for Comparative Law and Private International Law in Hamburg) and, at the international level, the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) in Rome see the light of the day. The—explicit or implicit—objectives of these institutions differed widely. In the deed of trust of the Heidelberg institute, its founder, the elder of the Berlin merchants Carl Leopold Netter, expressed the desire ‘to testify that, even in times of war, the work for peace is not forgotten’ . Consequently, the aim of that institute was to fund research and Chapter 7