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 American Review of International Arbitration - ARIA - Vol. 6 No. 1 1995 

American Review of International Arbitration - ARIA - (U.S. Price)
American Review of International Arbitration - ARIA (International Price)

ARIA Vol. 6  No. 1 1995 

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The Law and Practice Relating to Appeals from Arbitration Awards, by D. Rhidian Thomas. London, Lloyd's of London Press Ltd., 1994. Pp. 608.


England, as American international arbitration practitioners know, was liberated from the shackles of the much criticized "stated" or "special" case system by the Arbitration Act 1979, which substituted a more restricted system of rights to appeal from arbitral awards. In the bad old days, before 1979, parties appeared before the courts after arbitration to dispute points of law as a regular aspect of English arbitral proceedings. Such relitigation of arbitral decisions contributed substantially to costs and delays.
One goal of the 1979 Act was to alleviate this situation and increase the attractiveness of English arbitration, and the new law has been a smashing success in that regard. Now, arbitrators no longer may state an award in the form of a "special case" setting out a question of law to be resolved by the High Court. Yet a surprisingly large body of law relating to appeals remains. Professor D. Rhidian Thomas of the University of East Anglia has collected this English law of "myriad complexities and intricacies"[1] in a comprehensive volume, which is subtitled "A Thematic Analysis of the Arbitration Act 1979." It seeks both to explain the 1979 Act and to place the Act in its historical context, discussing the large volume of relevant case law (as of January 1994) and providing a helpful description of aspects of practice in the English courts involving appeals from awards.