Arbitration under the Rules of the Chicago International Dispute Resolution Association (CIDRA)

International arbitration has become the established method of determining international commercial disputes, and long-standing international arbitral institutions report a steadily increasing number of cases. Against this background, it is not entirely surprising that in recent years also a number of new arbitral centers have arrived on the international arbitration scene, most of them focusing on disputes involving parties from a particular country or region, but generally at the same time offering their services and their institutional rules to parties and arbitration practitioners from elsewhere in the world.
One of these newcomers is the Chicago International Dispute Resolution Association (CIDRA), whose Arbitration Rules entered into force on 1 July 1999. The present article attempts to give an overview over the CIDRA Rules and comments on some of their distinctive features. In doing so, it may assist parties and their legal representatives in their decision about a possible choice of the CIDRA Rules, which - as far as could be ascertained - have not yet been subject to any reported case law and have only occasionally been referred to in legal writings.