Arbitration Under the New Pennsylvania Arbitration Statute

Abstract

As indicated in detail in the main text of this article the new Pennsylvania Arbitration Statute is a companion statute with the following recently enacted arbitration acts: The United States Arbitration Statute (1926), and the statutes of New York (1920), New Jersey (1923), Massachusetts (1925) and Territory of Hawaii (1925). The California Act of 1927 likewise falls into this group. The Oregon Act of 1925 is similar. A bill is now pending in the legislature of Rhode Island to provide the same type of statute in that state. This group of statutes is similar to the English Arbitration Statute of 1889. A different type of arbitration statute has been recently enacted in Nevada (1925), Utah (1927), North Carolina (1927) and Wyoming (1927). These states have adopted the Uniform Arbitration Act submitted by the Commissioners on Uniform Laws. The important departure in this second group of statutes is that the statute deals only with agreements to arbitrate existing controversies. Common law rules of revocability and enforceability are left unchanged as concerns future-disputes agreements.