Despite recent Supreme Court consideration, the relationship between the Arbitration Act & the Senior Courts Act remains unclear, say Rian Matthews & Tom Cameron
The Arbitration Act 1996 (AA 1996) is the primary source of English law on arbitration. A key principle underlying the Act is the goal of increasing the autonomy of the arbitral process and limiting court intervention (s 1(c)). To support arbitration, however, AA 1996 gives the English courts significant powers to grant interim orders to preserve assets and evidence (under s 44). Yet the exercise of these powers is subject to strict limitations, so that control of the arbitral process rests with the appointed tribunal.
But there is a tension between the limitations on the courts’ powers under s 44 of AA 1996 and the courts’ wide and general discretion under s 37 of the Senior Courts Act 1981 (SCA 1981) to grant injunctions or appoint a receiver where it is “just and convenient to do so”. In 2005, the Court of Appeal remarked that the relationship between the powers under these two acts would “at some stage require
