Having been in lockdown as a result of COVID-19 for the last 12 weeks, I’ve had a chance to spend more time than usual with my books. This led me to focus my latest column on what I believe are important books in the field of international commercial arbitration. Given the somewhat presumptuous nature of this task, I begin with some caveats and a word about methodology.

First the caveats. A list such as this is likely to suffer from limitations resulting from parochialism, subjectivity, and lack of linguistic competence: parochialism, because I’m sure that if I had pursued my legal career in, say, Hong Kong, rather than New York, I would have relied upon books different to those currently on my shelves; subjectivity, because my own personal interests will inevitably lead me to prefer some books over others; and lack of linguistic competence, because I’m sure that if I could read, for example, Portuguese or Mandarin, the list would be different. In order to take this latter point into account, I focus only on books published in English.