In the first of two articles marking 10 years of the Arbitration Act 1996, Khawar Qureshi QC discusses some key cases
A case search will show that there are almost 400 publicly available decisions to consider which involve the Arbitration Act 1996 (AA 1996). There are in fact likely to be more court decisions, as some will be clothed with confidentiality where the parties have agreed for this and there is no overriding public interest to the contrary.
However, before jumping to the tempting conclusion that this indicates excessive scope for intervention by the English courts, one must bear in mind that not all these decisions will have involved challenges to the arbitral process. Some will have sought anti-suit injunctions to uphold a choice of arbitration or assistance for the arbitral process by some other means from the court.
Indeed, the clear message from all the key cases, most of which have been decided in the past couple of years, is that the choice of arbitration is being strongly supported by the English courts.
This article will focus upon four themes concerning
