The Permanent Court of Arbitration

Arbitration in the Nineteenth Century. While arbitration was employed for the settlement of international disputes throughout the nineteenth century, it was employed more frequently in the later than in the earlier part of the century. In most cases, resort to arbitration depended upon an ad hoc agreement between the states concerned; the tribunal to which a dispute was referred was created ad hoc, and it ceased to function when the particular dispute was disposed of. It was hardly before the middle of the century that states began to agree in advance to have resort to arbitration, and these agreements were usually very restricted. General bipartite arbitration treaties were all but unknown prior to 1850; and even when they became more numerous their provisions were seldom all-embracing. Increasingly, however, states began to agree in advance to arbitrate special questions. In a few cases, provisions for the arbitration of certain disputes were included in multipartite instruments: the Universal Postal Convention of October 9, 1874 (Article 16), the General Act of Brussels of July 2, 1890 (Article 55), and the Convention on Railway Freight Transportation of October 14, 1890 (Article 57), are outstanding examples.