Interstate Arbitration and Foreign Judges

This chapter concentrates on interstate arbitration and foreign judges. Interstate arbitration is identified by the sources as a genuine Greek tradition, attested from the Archaic period, which was employed and fostered by other powers, such as the Hellenistic Kings and Republican Rome. It allowed two parties in conflict to solve disputes by resorting to the judgment of a third party agreed by both. Its use contributed to the establishing of forms of international law, encouraging the poleis to identify a set of shared principles and rules, at least for territorial disputes, the most common kind of controversy. The use of foreign judges is another, more recent, feature of judicial relations between poleis. In the Hellenistic period, small groups of people were elected by their city to conduct trials between citizens of another polis, according to the laws of that polis, where local tribunals no longer worked on a regular basis.