LAW4179 International Commercial Arbitration

Workload:
Taught intensively for three weeks, with twelve hours of classes per week.

Extensive readings were set before the subject started, however these were largely covered in class and appeared at times to be superfluous. Some time commitment was required in preparing for the moot and completing the take-home assessment, however overall the workload was light.

Prescribed Prerequisites/Recommended Prerequisites:
Prescribed Prerequisites: Foundations of Law, Criminal Law 1, Public law and statutory interpretation, Torts, Contract A, Contract B, Property A and Property B.

Recommended Prerequisites: none.

Assessments:
Option to select any two of the following three options:
 * 1) Research assignment
 * 2) Take-home examination
 * 3) Moot

Recorded Lectures:
No.

Past exams available:
No.

Textbook recommended?
Excerpts from the textbook were made online.

Comments:
Prato Term 2 2014

The subject was on an interesting area of law, however given the nature of the topic being the procedure by which parties elect to have commercial arrangements governed legal systems of their choice (of which there are many options), the subject was taught in a very broad manner and did not contain a great deal of substantive law.

The unit provides an overview of the way that multiple legal systems can have jurisdiction over different aspects of a commercial arrangement, and the interplay between those legal systems. As it is not possible within the timeframe of the unit to obtain a full understanding of these underlying legal systems, at times the discussion of their interaction becomes quite abstract. The unit aims to provide a general understanding of how international commercial arbitration operates in practice, and succeeds in doing that, but students may feel at the end of the unit as if they do not have a full grasp of the way that any given arbitration would actually take place because the complexity of any single relevant system of law is beyond the scope of the unit. Nonetheless, the overview of different jurisdictions was interesting and leaves scope for students to research further into particular aspects if they wish to do so.

Taking the unit in Prato with an international lecturer who complements his academic work with real-world experience in the area was an interesting experience, with Professor Seraglini able to teach from a perspective that may not be available to many other lecturers. It was, however, also an experience in the realisation that international lecturing styles may differ markedly from what students are used to at Monash. Students may find the difference in tone and manner to be refreshing, however they may alternatively find it difficult to adjust their approach to studying the unit.