My doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion has been pub­lished as an e‑book and in print. Its title trans­lates as ‘SICC or Arbit­ra­tion? A Com­par­is­on of Pro­ceed­ings in the Singa­pore Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Court with the Advant­ages and Dis­ad­vant­ages of Inter­na­tion­al Arbit­ra­tion Pro­ceed­ings’. It does what it says on the tin, so here’s just a bit of background.

The dis­ser­ta­tion was the main part of my doc­tor­ate. It deals with the Singa­pore Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Court (SICC), which has been in exist­ence since the begin­ning of 2015. The Ger­man-speak­ing leg­al com­munity noted the SIC­C’s open­ing and occa­sion­ally men­tions it in dis­cus­sions about estab­lish­ing com­mer­cial courts in Ger­many. Until now, how­ever, there has been no mono­graph­ic study of this court. My motiv­a­tion was to present the SICC to the Ger­man-speak­ing leg­al com­munity (and oth­er inter­ested parties) as a prac­tic­al example and to show that a com­mer­cial court can be set up and oper­ated reas­on­ably suc­cess­fully with­in two years. The increas­ing import­ance of South­east Asia, in addi­tion to Asi­a’s gen­er­al sig­ni­fic­ance, fur­ther enhances the rel­ev­ance of the SICC for Ger­man businesses.

But the SICC is not the be-all and end-all. Arbit­ra­tion remains the most pop­u­lar form of dis­pute res­ol­u­tion for inter­na­tion­al com­mer­cial dis­putes. So why would parties bring an inter­na­tion­al com­mer­cial dis­pute to the SICC rather than to arbitration?

Parties might choose the SICC if the reas­ons for arbit­ra­tion applied as well or bet­ter to the SICC. They might also con­sider it if arbitration’s dis­ad­vant­ages were less pro­nounced or dif­fer­ent in SICC pro­ceed­ings. The dis­ser­ta­tion ana­lyses the extent to which this is the case.

I would like to thank my super­visor Pro­fess­or Dr Wolfgang Hau, my second exam­iner Pro­fess­or Dr Klaus Sachs, but also Pro­fess­or Dr Gie­s­ela Rühl and Pro­fess­or Dr Thomas Riehm for provid­ing me with the latest lit­er­at­ure just before the dis­ser­ta­tion went to press. I would also like to thank my col­league Dr Andreas Respondek for his encour­age­ment and proofread­ing. Also, thanks to my etern­al bas­ket­ball coach, Edafe Knabe, for reg­u­larly provid­ing me with digit­al mix­tapes that make all work easi­er. My greatest thanks go to my wife Nura Sen­ari for her uncon­di­tion­al sup­port dur­ing my doc­tor­ate jour­ney. She imme­di­ately knew what I was get­ting at when I told her one day in early August 2022 that I had an idea for a project …

The book is avail­able for pur­chase here.

This is the Eng­lish ver­sion of a Ger­man Linked­In post from the oth­er day.