The increase in the importance of arbitration continues unabated, unnoticed as it might be in many Law Schools. In their different ways, both of these volumes illustrate that importance.

The 17th volume of the Yearbook Commercial Arbitration follows much the same pattern as its predecessors, although the increasing volume of case law has squeezed out some regular features. The National Reports are no longer included, these having been consigned to the binders of the International Handbook on Commercial Arbitration since 1988. The present volume does, however, include a table of contents which provides a useful list of the main legislative texts included in those binders. Similarly, the volume of court judgments and arbitral awards precludes the inclusion of any articles on arbitration in this volume. The chief value of this volume lies in the wealth of arbitral awards and of court judgments on arbitration, the UNCITRAL Model Law, the New York Convention, the 1961 European Convention, and the ICSID Convention. In addition, the volume sets out selected decisions of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, now nearing the end of its mammoth task; various arbitration rules, including the 1991 rules of the American Arbitration Association; and reports on recent developments in the People’s Republic of China, England and Scotland. The volume, the usefulness of which is greatly enhanced by the excellence of its index of arbitral awards, closes with an invaluable bibliography of writings on arbitration. The Yearbook is one of the few truly indispensable publications for any lawyer, professional or academic, whose interests in commercial litigation extend beyond the purely domestic sphere. And, happily, the editors have not rested on their hard-earned laurels but have once more produced a volume of the highest quality and utility.

The second book reviewed here is very different. The Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal has operated for more than a decade using a modified version of the UNCITRAL arbitration rules. It has, therefore, more practical experience of the strengths and weaknesses of these widely used rules than any other tribunal. That experience is distilled by the authors of this book,