Uniform Arbitration Act

The Uniform Arbitration Act was an act that originated in the year 1955 and it was created by the NCCUSL or (National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws). The main purpose of this law was to create one way to go about making an arbitration in the United States law.^[1]

This arbitration act helped immensely with local government functions and have helped to give all of the 50 states in the United States one universal way to function when it comes to arbitration, instead of each state making their own way of going about arbitration.The law was officially adopted by Congress in the year 2000 and it requires all 50 states to adopt their own version of this act. Many states decided to adopt a very similar version of the 1955 Uniform Arbitration Act and the states made a few changes to this act, however it mostly remained the same. In doing so there was not to much difficulty for the states to agree on a version of the act and to adopt it into their own state law.^[2]

Details

Section 1:includes the ruling on a written agreement to submit any existing controversy to arbitration or a provision in a written contract to submit to arbitration any controversy thereafter arising between the parties is valid, enforceable and irrevocable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract. (Gibbons,Marten,Sumners,Witte. pg.2)

Section 2 : requires the court to compel arbitration when there is an arbitration agreement and one party refuses to arbitrate.' In making the determination whether to compel arbitration, the court is limited to deciding whether an agreement to arbitrate exists, whether the dispute involved is within the scope of the agreement and whether the right to arbitrate was waived. The court is not free to examine the merits of the controversy.' (Gibbons,Marten,Sumners,Witte. pg.16)

There are more sections included in this act that are not fully listed. In order to find the rest of these acts you can view an image of the actual Unifrom Arbitration Act and there you will see the following sections as well as a more detailed description as to what each section entails specifically. This Act has come in to some controversy since its adoption in 2000, and this has to do with the freedom of the states to develop their own version of the Act. So while the Act is meant to make a uniform method of arbitration, it differs slightly depending on which state you visit or reside in.

References

External links

• Act text