The UNCITRAL Model Law at the US State Level

The arbitration law of the United States remains, regrettably, the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), enacted in 1925 and essentially unchanged. Despite its age, it has been significantly amended only once, in order to transpose into law the New York and Panama Conventions. Otherwise, it reads just as it did when enacted almost a century ago. Given its age and the remarkable developments in the law of arbitration over past decades, the FAA unsurprisingly fails to address a very large number of issues that have arisen in arbitral proceedings and judicial decisions on arbitration in the many intervening years. Even the solutions to the issues the FAA does address are to a great extent outdated or otherwise inadequate. Rusty Park is among those most alert to the deficiencies of the FAA and has shown himself over decades especially well equipped to suggest how they might best be addressed. I do not mean by focusing in this article on the UNCITRAL Model Law to suggest that Rusty particularly favours its adoption at either the federal or state level in the United States. But since at least some US states have viewed adoption of the Model Law as a useful way to enhance the governance of international arbitration in the United States, examining their attempts at improvement seems an exercise especially suitable for a work in Rusty’s honour