The activity of regular arbitrators has jurisdictional nature and substitutes for the function of the ordinary judge, so that establishing whether a dispute belongs to the cognition of the former or the latter is configured as a question of jurisdiction.
The arbitration clause referring generically to disputes arising from the contract to which it pertains is to be interpreted, in the absence of express contrary will, in the sense that all and only disputes having causa petendi in the contract itself fall within arbitral jurisdiction, excluding those which have, in it, uniquely a historical presupposition.
The ruling on the exception concerning the jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunal is preliminary to every merit evaluation on the efficacy of the contract, every dispute deriving from application of contractual provisions having to be devolved to the cognition of the arbitral tribunal.