Welcome to this historical overview of international arbitration. In this video, we will focus on how modern international arbitration came about. When did international arbitration emerge? For which types of disputes was it used? And, what can we learn today from these historical examples? These are the main issues that we will be addressing together in this video. Arbitration between states or state like entities has a long history. In fact, disputes between states and state like entities were settled through international arbitration well before the first international court or tribunals were created by states. Even at the time of ancient Greece, early forms of what we could call arbitration were used to solve disputes between allied states and city states relating to their independence and sovereignty. In the Middle Ages, arbitration was also largely used. In those arbitrations, the dispute was often settled by a single arbitrator called an Empire. Most often the single arbitrator was the Pope or a King or Emperor from another state. But these arbitrations involved different entities than what we now call states. And the way in which the dispute was settled did not resemble modern day practice. The decision was regularly based on principles of equity than law, was not reasoned and the arbitrators were not fully independent and impartial. With the 1648 peace treaties of Westphalia, which followed the 30 years war in Europe, and the primacy of states sovereignty that came along, arbitration almost disappeared in interstate relations. But arbitration resurfaced towards the end of the 18th and 19th century. These arbitrations paved the way for the contemporary arbitration we now have. The Jay Treaty arbitration is usually considered as the starting point of modern international arbitration. The treaty was signed between Great Britain and the United States, mainly to settle outstanding issues following the American War of Independence. The mechanism established under that treaty to settle these disputes is remarkable in several respects. First, the treaty established three types of commissions. First commission was established to settle the dispute between the two states in relation mainly to boundaries. The second and third commission were established to hear two types of mixed disputes. First, claims for compensation due to British nationals for debts owed to them by US nationals, which would be compensated by the US. Secondly, claims from United States nationals against Great Britain for treatment of their property subsequent to the independence of the United States. The treaty paved the way not only for a modern form of arbitration to settle disputes between two states, but also for disputes between nationals of one state and another state. It also set precedents since the decisions of the commissions were based on law and contained reasons. At the same time, the commissions were composed exclusively of nationals of both parties. The Alabama Claims arbitration is another notable example in this respect. The dispute related to damages suffered by the US government, due to attacks on union ships by Confederate Navy ships which had been built in British shipyards during the American Civil War. One of the ships was the CSS Alabama. In 1871, the U.S. and the United Kingdom signed the Washington Treaty. In which they decided to have this and some other claims settled through an international arbitration tribunal in Geneva. The Arbitration ruled in favor of the US and it set an important precedent to successfully settle interstate claims through arbitration. Moreover, the tribunal for the first time was composed of a majority of arbitrators which were not nationals of one of the states party to the dispute, a practice which persists to date. The independence of the tribunal thus was enhanced. In that sense, it was one of the first arbitrations that very much resembles the current practice. The case was also important in establishing the rule that the parties to the dispute can freely determine the law applicable to the dispute, and that this can include non-binding rules or so-called soft law. This was the beginning of a series of several other mainly interstate arbitrations, and paved the way for the 1899 Hague Convention which created the Permanent Court of Arbitration. We will discuss this institution more in detail in the next video. Concurrently with these developments, the 19th and the start of the 20th centuries, saw more than 120 so-called mixed claims commissions. Like the model of the Jay treaty, this commissions heard several types of claims, interstate claims and/or claims from nationals of one state against another state. They were very often created following an armed conflict between two states or internal disturbances in one state during which nationals of other states had suffered injuries. Examples are: several United States Mexico claims commissions in the late 19th and early 20th century and the various commissions established after the second world war to settle claims with Germany. It's important to note however, that the claims of individuals very often especially in the early examples, had to be brought by the state of their nationality. In other words, individuals often had no direct access to the commission or tribunal. I mentioned this because this stands in stark contrast to the current practice in for example, Investment Treaty Arbitration. Since the creation of first the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1921, and its successor the International Court of Justice in 1945, arbitration became less popular especially to settle interstate disputes. Arbitration of interstate disputes still took place outside the context of the Permanent Court of Arbitration but the numbers were clearly in decline. More generally, recourse to judicial settlement also declined as did the use of mixed claims commissions. Since the end of the Cold War, arbitration has been increasingly popular among states, as is illustrated by the growing number of cases settled under the auspices of the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Moreover, this is evidenced by the large interstate arbitration practice in subject matters such as diplomatic protection, environmental disputes, territorial disputes, or disputes under the law of the Sea Convention. The last decades of the 20th century also saw a parallel increase in so-called mixed arbitrations. First, companies which had obtained large concessions in the extraction of natural resources in developing states, had secured the use of arbitration to settle disputes arising under the states contracts. This in turn resulted in the creation of the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes in the 1960s which although under utilized in the first decades after its creation, paved the way for an impressive rise in the number of arbitrations between foreign investors and states starting at the beginning of the 21st century. Thirdly, other mechanisms are also evidence of this, such as Iran-United States Claims Tribunal created in 1981 to settle disputes between Iran and the United States, and nationals of both against either state following the Iran hostage crisis. The Iran-US Claims Tribunal is located here in the Hague and has already decided the vast majority of the claims that have been filed. In this video, you have learned how international arbitration has evolved over the past centuries and decades. In doing, I have pointed to several important principles of international arbitration which we will discuss in the next video.