Professor Várady published the 7th Edition of his casebook „International Commercial Arbitration – A Transnational Approach”. The project was initiated by Professor Várady, and the first edition of the casebook appeared in 1999 with co-authors Arthur von Mehren (Harvard) and John Barcelo (Cornell). After Professor von Mehren passed away, Professor Stefan Kröll (Bucerius Law School Hamburg) joined as a co-author.
A critically important characteristic of the book is a transnational approach, inspired by a feature of American legal education. Earlier, American law schools taught the law of given American states. Since the last two thirds of the twentieth century, however, American law schools came to teach American law rather than state laws. State laws still exist, but harmonization and the range of similarities has made it possible to teach contracts, torts, or civil procedure as American law. The authors perceived a similar chance in the realm of international commercial arbitration. National arbitration acts still exist, but international conventions, as well as harmonization of both arbitration acts and institutional rules, made it possible to perceive (and to teach) international commercial arbitration as a transnational subject.
As a result of this original approach, the casebook has been used on all five continents.
The 7th Edition of the casebook and of the Documents Supplement is scheduled to be out of print on December 25, 2018, yet it will carry “2019” as the year of publication. The Teacher’s Manual is expected to be out of print by February 2019.