When lawyers speak of
comparative law, they mostly think of the ‘civil’ and the ‘common law’ − two
legal traditions that are widely viewed as isolated from one another. In the
realm of international arbitration, however, these traditions inevitably
collide. Accordingly, authors have rightly referred to arbitration as a
‘real-life laboratory for the development of a procedural Esperanto’. But much
of the academic work emerging from this laboratory seems to draw primarily on
anecdote and the authors’ personal experiences. This paper moves beyond such
anecdotal approaches and examines the alleged civil v. common law divide
empirically. Based on generative interviews with twenty-six of the world’s
‘most in demand’ arbitrators, it concludes that, within international
arbitration, significant differences between civil and common law have largely
faded over time. By contrast, experienced international arbitrators apply a de
facto ‘Uniform Code of Arbitral Procedure’. Exploring the content of this
framework − and borrowing from Francis Fukuyama’s famous theory − the article
argues that international arbitration today has reached its own ‘End of
History’. That is, the common law − including many of its typical features −
has triumphed and now represents the dominant approach in international
arbitration.