An arbitration clause providing for the referral to arbitrators of "any dispute relating to or in any event concerning or arising from the contract", expressly qualifying the arbitration as "institutional" and referring to the provisions of Articles 816 et seq. of the Code of Civil Procedure, unequivocally constitutes institutional arbitration, with the consequence that the plea of lack of jurisdiction of the ordinary court raises a question of jurisdiction and not of competence.
For the purposes of qualifying arbitration as institutional, decisive importance attaches to terminology consistent with the activity of "judging" and with the result of a "judgment" in relation to a "dispute", whereas the conferral upon arbitrators of the power to decide according to equity, the prior attribution to the award of the characteristic of non-appealability, and the provision exempting arbitrators from compliance with procedural formalities do not constitute determining elements for excluding the institutional nature.
The attribution to arbitrators of any dispute relating to the interpretation and performance of a contract does not deprive the ordinary court, when seised, of the power to interpret the arbitration clause for the purpose of delimiting the arbitral jurisdiction and ascertaining whether the dispute falls within it, the court being required, when faced with a plea of arbitration, to verify the validity of the clause and to declare the jurisdiction of the arbitrators in case of established validity, or otherwise to affirm its own jurisdiction.