CENTRAL - Center for Transnational Law

CENTRAL is a research facility at the University of Cologne School of Law, Germany. It is devoted to the research, teaching and study of transnational commercial law, the "New Lex Mercatoria" and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR).

CENTRAL operates Trans-Lex.org, a unique research tool on transnational commercial law for academics and practitioners. It containes the TransLex-Principles, a systematic collection of over 130 rules and principles of transnational commercial law together with commentaries and thousands of comparative law references, such as as arbitral awards, restatements, statutes, doctrinal writings and contract clauses. TransLex also hosts the largest online archive of historic arbitration documents, from Homer's Illias to modern times.

In 2006, CENTRAL has first published a unique teaching and traning project on Alternative Dispute Resolution. The third edition of the project was published in 2015. The project combines a highly realistic Case Study, a Handbook, a USB-Card with more than six hours of videos of negotiation, mediation and arbitration sessions, as well as the whole file of the case as pdfs and numerous interactive teaching and training tools, and a website (www.private-dispute-resolution.com).

Each year, CENTRAL, in cooperation with the German Institution of Arbitration (DIS), organizes the Cologne Academies, two parallel Summer Academies on International Business Negotiation/Mediation and Arbitration.

Professor Klaus Peter Berger and the CENTRAL-Team