Comparative Law as Rhetoric: An Analysis of the Use of Comparative Law in International Arbitration

The bulk of the comparative work of an arbitration counsel will go towards finding effective means of persuading a tribunal. It is part of his advocacy tool kit. Typically, there are three distinct ways in which counsel would then deploy these tools in practice: (1) he could use comparative law to explain law foreign to the tribunal in a manner helpful to his case, (2) he could use it as a means to close legal gaps in the law applicable to the dispute, and (3) he could use it to extract general principles of international law or trade usages. This essay deals with the first of these questions.

In brief, it focuses on comparative legal rhetoric in arbitration. It leaves for later discussion the more traditional substantive roles of comparative law in the context of international arbitration.