This work was published in 1986. In January 1988 a colleague was invited to review it for this Quarterly. Two years later he delegated that task to me. I am not surprised that it has not received priority. Mr Dore’s work hardly qualifies as a good read. In his Preface he explains his object:

As the decade-old work program of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) in international commercial arbitration drew to a conclusion at the commission’s eighteenth session, a comprehensive review of the substantive results of its work in this field seemed to be called for. This book attempts to fill this need.

The primary design and purpose of the book is to offer its reader a detailed textual analysis of the rules and procedures set up by UNCITRAL in the related fields of arbitration and conciliation. Such a textual explication must inevitably entail a concentrated focus on the text, meaning, legislative history, and intentions, and, finally, the structural interrelationships within and between the rules and documents under study. The book employs all these techniques simultaneously in the hope of furthering the understanding of these rules, not only by the international legal practitioner (either as conciliator, arbitrator, or counsel), but also by arbitral institutions and the academic and business communities.

To facilitate a comprehensive and integrated review of UNCITRAL’s work in this area, the book assembles under one overarching scheme all the four texts that UNCITRAL has adopted to regulate the entire field of the peaceful settlement of international trade disputes, namely, the conciliation rules, the arbitration rules, the recommendations addressed to arbitral institutions using the arbitration rules and the model law on international commercial arbitration. The approach chosen in the book permits an exhaustive analysis of the substantive provisions of these texts, in both the substantive and procedural contexts.

The four texts that Mr Dore analyses are for the most part simple and clear. Yet Mr Dore has managed to devote some 250 pages to his analysis. In part the length is attributable to the abundance of footnotes, which painstakingly detail the genesis of virtually every provision in the rules. Those who are interested in the history of the rules will find their answer in this book—or at least references to the travaux préparatoires which will provide their answer. In part the length results from an approach which results in repetition and a tendency to regale the reader with statements of the obvious.

Mr Dore deals first with the Conciliation Rules. After a general chapter on conciliation, he devotes five pages of text and three pages of footnotes to what he describes as “an overview” of the scope of application of the rules. This is, in essence, an explanation that the rules are designed to be adopted voluntarily by parties to a dispute and are not subject to any limitations as to their potential ambit. The third chapter begins with an analysis of Art. 1 of the rules, which is largely a repetition of what has already been more than adequately dealt with in the previous chapter. Footnote references are over-generous. In Chapter 2 a reference is given to support the proposition that “most parties will not undertake the effort [of conciliation] unless they are of the opinion that there is a reasonable prospect of a successful resolution”. In Chapter 3 we read: “It is indeed rather likely that the parties opting for conciliation