Jurisdiction of Sovereign States and International Commercial Arbitration: A Bound Relationship

Abstract

Historically, judgment has private roots, rather than public. Before States took over control of the entire judgment process, it was a private issue. Parties, which had a dispute, apply to a local authority for a “fair” solution. This authority could have been a chief of the clan (in early ages) or a senator (in Roman time) or an imam (or kadi) (in Islamic law) and so on. The picture was more or less the same all around the world; different communities (racial or religious) had different laws and different types of courts in the same country in order to resolve their own disputes. Until the 18th century, courts of the States were only one of these different types of authority for judgment (but on a nationwide and supreme basis compared with the others) and especially were used for disputes that arose between separate communities.