Abstract:
Party autonomy is a guiding principle of commercial arbitration, whether international or
domestic. This implies parties have the freedom to draft an arbitration agreement, choose
applicable laws, appoint arbitrators, place of arbitration, and language of arbitration, even up
to the post-award stage, including setting aside and reviewing an arbitral award. This freedom is
not absolute; however, the party may be restricted in arbitration by different limiting factors.
The thesis is objectively to analyze the principle of party autonomy and its limitations under
Ethiopian arbitration law comparatively with international commercial arbitration law, mainly
from the experience of the UNICTRAL Model Law. The thesis found that these limiting factors
under Ethiopian commercial arbitration laws, such as the arbitrability of the dispute, the law of
the seat of arbitration, mandatory rules, public policy, third-party intervention, court
involvement, and the rules of the arbitration institution and the decision of the arbitral tribunal,
As a result, these limitations affect the attractiveness of arbitration to businesses. In doing so, I
utilized purely doctrinal research methods, and to attain this, I mainly used secondary sources
and some primary sources, such as laws, rules, cases, or statutes. In the conclusion, the
researcher concluded that Ethiopian arbitration law should not fully confirm the UNICTRAL
model law and also fails to take into account the enactments of its domestic commercial
legislation as well as case law to make it more favorable in respect of the form requirements
governing arbitration agreements, arbitration proceedings, and the enforcement of arbitral
awards. Based on this, researchers recommend Ethiopian arbitration laws in commercial
arbitration tend to maximize the effect of the principle of party autonomy by reducing these
restrictions as conforming to the UN Model Law.
