Judicial Assistance by German Courts in Aid of International Arbitration

Under the national procedural rules of most countries, judicial assistance in aid of international arbitration will be granted only by the courts at the seat of the arbitration (absent a letter rogatory from a court of the arbitral seat to a court in another jurisdiction). Germany, following an arbitration-friendly approach, departed from this standard practice by opening its courts to the participants of foreign arbitrations. The assistance it offers includes the taking of evidence and also measures related to the performance of other judicial acts that arbitral tribunals are not empowered to carry out on their own. This article sheds light on Germany’s offer to the international arbitration community which rather surprisingly has not received sufficient attention to date