第19回模擬仲裁日本大会 (19th Vis Moot Japan)

International commercial arbitration emerged in the twentieth century as the dominant mechanism for resolving cross-border business disputes, offering parties a neutral forum, enforceable awards, and procedural flexibility that domestic courts often could not provide. Its modern legal architecture rests on two foundational instruments: the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, which now binds more than 170 states and makes arbitral awards enforceable across borders with limited grounds for refusal, and the 1985 UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration (revised in 2006), which has been adopted in whole or in part by dozens of jurisdictions to harmonize national arbitration regimes. Major institutional rules—those of the ICC, LCIA, SIAC, HKIAC, JCAA, and others—have evolved in parallel, supplemented by soft-law instruments such as the IBA Rules on the Taking of Evidence and the IBA Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest. The Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot, founded in 1993/94 in Vienna and complemented by the Vis East Moot in Hong Kong, has become the principal training ground for the next generation of arbitration practitioners. Problems are typically grounded in the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) of 1980 and a designated set of arbitral rules, requiring participants to engage with substantive sales law, conflict-of-laws questions, and procedural issues such as jurisdiction, applicable law, interim measures, evidence, and the scope of arbitral discretion. Japan's own Vis Pre-Moot tradition has grown alongside the expansion of Tokyo and Osaka as arbitration-friendly seats, supported by reforms to the JCAA Rules and the establishment of the Japan International Dispute Resolution Center. Today the field is contending with significant challenges: debates over transparency and legitimacy (particularly in investor-state arbitration, addressed in part by the Mauritius Convention and ongoing UNCITRAL Working Group III reforms), the rise of third-party funding, concerns over costs and duration, the integration of technology and virtual hearings accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and competition among seats in Asia—Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Seoul—for a larger share of caseload. Delegates exploring this topic are expected to weigh how arbitral practice can preserve party autonomy and enforceability while responding to demands for efficiency, diversity, and procedural fairness.