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Lord Salisbury, according to the historiography, was notoriously sceptical of international arbitration. Yet, at the end of the nineteenth century, Salisbury's last government entered into an arbitration agreement with Venezuela in relation to its border dispute with British Guiana and a general arbitration agreement with the US. It then took the lead in establishing a permament court of international arbitration at the fist Hague Peace Conference in 1899. This article explains why that change in Salisbury's outlook occurred, how Salisbury developed a distinctively Conservative approach to arbitration in international relations and how the British contribution to the development of an institutional international rule of law at the end of the nineteenth century was as much a Conservative moment as a liberal one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, the government of Venezuela decided to re-structure certain oil projects, known as Associations, so as to bring them in line with the 2001 Hydrocarbons Law. In response, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips decided to exit Venezuela. Supposedly motivated by a commitment to uphold the principle of sanctity of contract, the companies subsequently initiated a series of arbitrations involving some of the largest claims ever put before international tribunals. However, the bargains that the companies insist they are defending are not reflected in the agreements that they had actually signed. Thus, these arbitrations amount to an attempt on the part of these companies to use international arbitral tribunals to re-draft on their behalf the contracts they had negotiated, so as to secure a windfall (which they had never bargained for) upon their exit from Venezuela. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The “Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine of 1904/05” constitutes a landmark in United States foreign policy. However, the 1902/03 Venezuela Crisis—in particular, the arbitration process between the South American country and Germany, Great Britain, and Italy that settled the crisis—led to President Theodore Roosevelt's decision to amend the Monroe Doctrine. The arbitrational award was an important impetus for the corollary because its decision appeared to encourage future European interventions in the western hemisphere. The Roosevelt Corollary was needed to prevent a situation similar to the 1902/03 Venezuela Crisis from occurring again. Strategically speaking, Roosevelt felt the corollary was necessary to uphold the Monroe Doctrine under new circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]