Definition
A compromis (also written compromis d'arbitrage) is a formal written agreement between two or more sovereign states that establishes the terms under which a specific international dispute will be submitted to arbitration or adjudication. The compromis defines the scope of the tribunal's jurisdiction, identifies the questions to be decided, sets procedural rules, and binds the parties to accept the outcome. It is the constitutive instrument of the arbitral proceeding itself — without it, no jurisdiction exists.
The term operates almost exclusively in public international law. It is distinct from a general arbitration treaty, which commits states in advance to arbitrate future disputes of a defined category. The compromis is the specific, operative agreement that activates arbitration for a particular, already-existing controversy.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No standard English entry. The word is French in origin and appears in English-language legal texts as a direct borrowing, typically italicized or treated as a foreign term.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed. The term had not entered general English dictionaries by that period, reflecting its specialized status as a term of art in international law and diplomacy.
Editorial note: Because compromis has no ordinary English meaning, readers encountering it in historical legal texts or treaty documents should treat it as a technical term of international law and not infer meaning from the French root "compromis" (meaning compromise or settlement in the broader sense). The legal compromis is not merely a compromise — it is a jurisdictional instrument.
Common Confusion
Compromis vs. general arbitration treaty: A standing arbitration treaty commits parties to a dispute-resolution mechanism in the abstract. The compromis is the specific agreement that brings a particular dispute before a specific tribunal under that mechanism — or independently, without any prior treaty. Conflating the two leads researchers to misread the scope of a tribunal's authority.
Compromis vs. arbitral award: The compromis creates jurisdiction and sets the questions. The arbitral award answers those questions. They are procedurally sequential and legally distinct documents.
Core Elements
A valid compromis typically specifies:
- The identity of the parties submitting the dispute
- A precise statement of the question or questions submitted for decision
- The composition of the tribunal or the method of selecting arbitrators
- The applicable rules of procedure and evidence
- The law or principles the tribunal is to apply
- A declaration that the parties accept the award as binding
The precision of the question submitted is often the most contested element. Courts and tribunals have repeatedly held that a tribunal cannot exceed the mandate defined in the compromis — any award on a question not submitted is considered ultra petita and may be void.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in international law, arbitration history, or treaty collections will encounter compromis as a term of art whose meaning and usage evolved significantly between the mid-nineteenth century and the post-World War I codification period.
The key navigational challenge is sourcing. A compromis may appear as an annex to a larger treaty, as a separate executive agreement, or embedded in diplomatic correspondence — not always as a standalone instrument with obvious headings. Researchers using the American Journal of International Law (referenced in Bouvier's) and the Martens Nouveau Recueil will find the most concentrated historical examples from the arbitration-heavy 1870–1920 period.
Corpus connections: The Law Mind corpus materials on the Alabama Claims arbitration (1872), the Bering Sea arbitration (1893), and the Hague Convention proceedings contain working examples of compromis language and illuminate how the element of "the question submitted" was drafted and contested in practice.
Jurisdictional variation is minimal for the concept itself — as a term of public international law, it operates between states rather than within domestic legal systems. However, domestic implementing legislation sometimes uses the term in contexts that track international usage closely, and researchers should verify whether a domestic court is treating a compromis as self-executing or requiring statutory implementation.
Post-1945 sources often use the term less frequently, as the jurisdiction of standing bodies like the International Court of Justice is established by separate instruments (the Optional Clause, special agreements). The "special agreement" in ICJ practice is the functional successor to the classic compromis, and researchers moving between historical and modern materials need to recognize this terminological shift.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary entry is minimal: "COMPROMIS (Fr.). Agreement of arbitration. 2 Am. J. Int. Law 898." The citation to the American Journal of International Law signals that Bouvier's was tracking the term's emergence in the literature of institutionalized international arbitration — a body of practice that was consolidating rapidly in the early twentieth century when this edition appeared.
The brevity is not an oversight. By Bouvier's time, the compromis was understood as a recognized form rather than a contested concept, and the definition needed only to anchor the term and point researchers to the literature. What Bouvier's does not supply — and what researchers need — is any account of the internal structure of the instrument or the consequences of a defective or ambiguous compromis. That gap must be filled by the treatise literature (Vattel, Hall, Oppenheim) and by the arbitral practice itself.
No other source dictionary in the current set addresses the term. Historical civil law dictionaries occasionally treat the related Roman law concept of compromissum (a private arbitration agreement), but the international law compromis is a distinct modern instrument and should not be read through the Roman law lens without care.
Jurisdictional Note
As a term of public international law, the compromis operates between sovereign states and does not map directly onto domestic arbitration law. In domestic commercial and labor arbitration contexts, the functional equivalent is the submission agreement. Researchers should not assume that cases interpreting domestic submission agreements illuminate the compromis, or vice versa.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: International Arbitration; Treaties and International Agreements; Arbitral Jurisdiction and Ultra Petita.