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Croft, Clyde --- "The New York Convention as a Driving Force" [2010] ELECD 431; in Hiscock, Mary; van Caenegem, William (eds), "The Internationalisation of Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: The Internationalisation of Law

Editor(s): Hiscock, Mary; van Caenegem, William

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849801027

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: The New York Convention as a Driving Force

Author(s): Croft, Clyde

Number of pages: 16

Extract:

15. The New York Convention as a
driving force
Clyde Croft SC*

INTRODUCTION

We tend to think that we are living in a unique period of internationalisa-
tion or globalisation.1 It is true that there has never before been such acces-
sibility to international air travel and communications, but this may be
deceptive. In many respects we are, at least from a legal perspective, only
now moving again to a period of internationalism. This has declined during
the twentieth century for a variety of historical reasons, the exploration
of which time does not permit. Nevertheless, an important factor seems
to have been the rise of the nation state at the expense of former world
empires or other transnational organisations. Global trading empires,
such as the British Empire, provided coherent and co-ordinated legal
systems throughout the world, together with some consistent legislative
models, enforceability of judgments and court process available between
different parts of the Empire and, of course, appeals to the one court,
the Privy Council.2 Interestingly, it seems that as the commercial domi-
nance and power of England rose throughout the nineteenth century, the
readiness of the common law to accept settled rules of international law
declined. So, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, `. . . if English law
was silent, it was the opinion of both Lord Mansfield and Blackstone that
a settled rule of international law must be considered to be part of English
law, and enforced as such'.3 However, by the latter ...