The statute that governs arbitrations seated in England, the Arbitration Act of 1996, is in the process of being amended, with the U.K. government having introduced a new Arbitration Bill into parliament in November 2023.

In this article, I discuss one amendment, of which it is important that practitioners in other countries are aware. In order to explain the amendment, I start with a proposition that practitioners in the United States, and in many other countries, are likely to view as so uncontroversial that it barely needs to be said. When parties agree on a governing law clause for their contract—e.g., “This Agreement shall be governed and construed in accordance with the laws of the state of New York”—absent explicit language to the contrary, that clause applies to all terms of the contract, including any arbitration clause.