Autonomous v. Domestic Concepts in the New York Convention

Day 1: 

The New York Convention of 1958 owes much of its success to being an international convention setting forth uniform rules. Its unified enforcement regime not only lowers the parties’ transaction costs of identifying under which circumstances an award will be recognized and enforced across jurisdictions. It also ensures that States cannot justify the failure to comply with their obligations under the New York Convention by reference to domestic law. Still, the courts of different contracting States apply the Convention differently. Oftentimes, this is due to the erroneous understanding of concepts employed by the drafters of the Convention. The papers presented at the conference examine whether given concepts must be interpreted autonomously rather than in light of domestic law, and, where this is the case, attempt to define these autonomous concepts. The papers will also examine which domestic law(s) apply to the extent that recourse to domestic law(s) is required.