A Proposal for the Abandonment of the Writing Requirement for Arbitration Agreements in National Laws

An arbitration agreement is an agreement in which two or more parties agree that a dispute which has arisen or may arise between them shall be resolved by one or more arbitrators. For the past decades, the written form has been a key requirement for arbitration agreements. However, there has arisen a shift in national laws towards the abandonment of this formal requirement to give the parties more freedom in the expression of their arbitration agreement. This argues for this abandonment and discusses how this can be realized in national laws.