"The present Compendium departs from these approaches to address in an encyclopedic manner the numerous questions associated with arbitration as a fundamental dispute resolution mechanism in the areas of international business and investment. Like an encyclopedia, the Compendium contains separate entries for most of the foundational principles and concepts underlying arbitration. It has brought together many of the leading and upcoming voices in the field from both academia and practice. The 67 entries outline the issues to be treated, describe their historic development, highlight the central approaches that scholars and practitioners have taken towards them, analyze the theories underlying those approaches, and delineate the arguments in areas of perennial dispute. The Compendium takes a holistic view of international arbitration, which distinguishes it from most other publications focusing on either commercial arbitration or investment arbitration, but not on both. It brings together, in one place, contributions covering all main areas of international arbitration from both a commercial and an investment arbitration perspective, and focusing more on the fundamental issues underlying the various topics than on the solutions adopted in any particular jurisdiction, thus making the Compendium a truly cross-border, transnational resource. This innovative approach will allow readers to identify the commonalities as well as the differences between commercial and investment arbitration, whether and where cross-fertilization has taken place, and what consequences it can have. The idea behind this Compendium was to provide a tool promoting the creation of a culture of international arbitration that considers commercial arbitration and investment arbitration as part of a whole but with certain distinct features particular to each, which the various contributions allow the reader to identify.
