Appeals from arbitration awards on points of law, challenges to awards on grounds of lack of substantive jurisdiction or for irregularity, applications relating to the appointment of arbitrators, actions to enforce awards, and other applications relating to commercial arbitration represent a substantial part of the work of the modern Commercial Court. This is very different from the position in the years after the Court was established.

The common law Courts were traditionally rather ambivalent about arbitration. The ancient Courts of King’s Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer of Pleas did little to enforce arbitration agreements. If a party brought legal proceedings in breach of an arbitration clause, the common law Judges would not stay the action; and, at common law, a party could validly revoke the mandate of an arbitrator, putting a stop to the reference. But if a reference did make it as far as an award, the common law Courts would only set the award aside in very limited circumstances.

By piecemeal development - limited statutory reform, intervention on equitable grounds by the Chancery, and changes in the way arbitration clauses were drafted - judicial powers to supervise arbitration slowly increased. The prospect of judicial assistance if things went wrong made parties increasingly confident about using arbitration in more complicated cases, and arbitration clauses became common in standard-form contracts drafted by trade associations. In the years after the Judicature Acts of the 1870’s, there was a widespread belief that commercial cases which had once been litigated in the Queen’s Bench were now often arbitrated instead. The commercial world complained that the Queen’s Bench was slower and more expensive than arbitration, and that commercial arbitrators knew more than most Judges about commercial law and practice. The growing reluctance of British commerce to use the national Courts was profoundly embarrassing for the judiciary, and a major factor behind the creation of the Commercial Court in 1895.

The Commercial Court was established quite soon after the Arbitration Act 1889, the first real attempt to place English arbitration law on a coherent footing. But applications under the new Act for the determination of points of law arising in a reference, or to challenge awards for lack of jurisdiction or for misconduct, were rare in commercial cases begin with. Moreover, there was no procedural rule that applications involving commercial arbitrations had to be made to the Commercial Court. As a result, arbitration did not form a significant part of the Commercial Court’s work in the early years.

This changed over the course of the 20th Century. Arbitration continued to increase in popularity, and arbitration agreements became as commonplace in charterparties and bills of lading as in trading contracts. The growth of maritime arbitration was reflected in the establishment of the London Maritime Arbitrators’ Association in 1960. The 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition & Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards further boosted arbitration by making awards readily enforceable around the world. As the number of arbitrations continued to increase, the number of related Court applications steadily grew, and over time, it became settled practice for applications to be made to the Commercial Court if the underlying arbitration was commercial.

Meanwhile, English arbitration law was revised by the Arbitration Act 1950 and subsequent amending legislation, and then essentially codified by the Arbitration Act 1996. Former Commercial Court Judges were closely involved with the Act. Lord Mustill, co-author of the first book to subject English arbitration law to detailed academic analysis, chaired a Departmental Committee to consider the future structure of arbitration legislation. When the Government accepted this Committee’s recommendation to consolidate the law in a new statute rather than adopt the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration, Lord Saville chaired the Committee which was responsible for drafting the new Act. Another Commercial Judge contributed to the modernisation of English arbitration in a different way: Sir Michael Kerr devoted much of his energy after his retirement in 1989 to reviving the London Court of International Arbitration, promoting London as a centre for the arbitral resolution of major international commercial disputes.

The Civil Procedure Rules make special provision for arbitration claims in Part 62 and Practice Direction 62. The Rules make the Commercial Court the principal Court for the supervision under the Act of commercial arbitrations which have a seat in England & Wales, and for the enforcement of commercial arbitration awards. Arbitration today accounts for around 25% - 30% of the Court’s work.