U.S. common law developments in the field of international commercial arbitration are practically too numerous and vast in scope to articulate, let alone analyze within a paradigm that seeks to discern doctrinal development. This task is rendered even more daunting when the proposition that “development equals progress” is challenged as a tenet that lacks inherent universality, and therefore is only true depending on the particularity of circumstances without in itself embodying apodictic features. Therefore, the developments analyzed here have been limited only to four salient principles having one common denominator; the extent to which they may justify amending the New York Convention to further the principles of uniformity, predictive value, certainty, party-autonomy, and transparency of standard in the Convention's application.

Together with the creation of the International Criminal Court (the “Rome Statute”) and the European Union, the New York Convention is likely the most successful international juridic accomplishment of the past century. As of this writing, the Convention enjoys 142 signatory nations. It can be asserted with confidence that the entire international commercial community of nations has signed the Convention. The absence of transnational courts of civil procedure vested with jurisdiction to adjudicate international private disputes has created a void that international commercial arbitration is filling in a manner universally acclaimed as effective and essential to the success of international commerce, particularly in a climate of economic globalization. The myopic effect of commenting on contemporary historical developments creates the expected distortion that erroneously reconfigures historical perspective.