International commercial arbitration and litigation are often seen as competing fora fields of law or markets This intersection is at its highest at the forefront of any proceedings at the jurisdictional stage The analysis of jurisdictional issues at the forefront of an arbitration has been confined in a descriptive analysis of the law and jurisprudence dealing with jurisdictional intersections almost in a mechanistic manner These are not however issues which can be treated as mere mechanical rules They are issues pertaining to core notions of authority sovereignty their origins and their allocation At the same time the pragmatic and practical domination of party autonomy is a fact which cannot be disregarded when one considers the normative and theoretical foundations of any model of dealing with these issues This book moves beyond an analysis of arbitration and jurisdiction clauses to reconcile theory and practice and provides an underlying theoretical model to explain and regulate jurisdictional intersections at the early stages of an arbitration from a private international law perspective It combines both an in depth engagement with the theoretical literature as well as a close examination and analysis of its practical consequences in the form of a restatement of the law of England and Wales From a methodological perspective it utilises contemporary theories in private international law to propose a coherent model of regulating arbitral jurisdictions which promotes autonomy and freedom of the parties at this stage Demonstrating first how the theoretical model can be applied in practice and second to provide a basis for a potential future top down or bottom up approach of adopting the proposed model it includes a succinct and practical codification of the current state of affairs in relation to the whole spectrum of jurisdictional issues in England and Wales to serve as a useful tool for practitioners considering jurisdictional issues both from the perspective of State courts and from the perspective of arbitral tribunals as well as academics researching in these areas
