International Legal Harmonisation in Theory and Practice

Legislative development aiming for global legal harmonisation has demonstrated varying degrees of success in different areas. The underlying reasons to the challenges such developments face range from the inconsistency between bottom-up and top-down drivers that influence legislative development, together with the political undercurrents shaping the arena of global legislative negotiations, to the inherent difference between theoretical and practical legal research. This paper analyses these influences, arguing that a possible solution counterbalancing these conflicting interests can come from private, interest-neutral organisations bridging the gap between academia and scholarly research, the legal profession and professional organisations, domestic legislative bodies, and international institutions developing legal harmonisation. The paper will look at the challenges and successes of legal harmonisation through the lens of legal harmonisation in the field of dispute resolution more broadly, including mediation, commercial arbitration, and investor-state dispute resolution, as reflected by the work of the UN Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). For the proposed possible solution, the paper looks at the establishment, operation, and scope of the UNCITRAL National Coordination Committee for Australia (UNCCA), of which the author is the current Deputy Chair