The Law of Commercial Arbitration and the New York Statute

Abstract

The decision of the New York Court of Appeals in the Berkovitz case' furnishes an opportunity for a reminder of the present legal status of commercial arbitration in this country and an outline of the steps yet to be taken to modernize the law upon this subject. For over three hundred years a dictum of Lord Coke has held sway over the legal minds of America. It is now on its fair way to decent burial. No movement in recent times has done more to bring the Bar and commerce into closer relation than the co-operative work of the past five years between the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York and the New York State Bar Association. And now the American Bar Association, through its Committee on Commerce, Trade and Commercial Law, is taking up the work of nationalizing the movement. Having been persuaded that American judges had been inadvertently led into following an obsolete theory of the law, the New York Chamber of Commerce was of opinion that the presentation of the more modern doctrine of the English courts would result in the correction of the judicial error in this country, as it had already been corrected in England by the English judges themselves. Accordingly, the Chamber had prepared to ask leave to intervene in such cases as would present the subject for reconsideration by the courts and had prepared a review of the authorities upon the subject.2 In 1914 the Bar Association of the State of New York created a committee known as the Committee on the of Unnecessary Litigation. At the i9i6 session of the Association the Committee was authorized to negotiate with the Chamber of Commerce for the adoption of Rules for the of Unnecessary Litigation, among which, under the heading, Prevention of Litigation After the Facts Become Fixed and Before Suit, the Committee included :3