Consent As The Cornerstone Of Arbitration: Analysing Section 7 Through Nagreeka And Glencore

The validity of an arbitration agreement under Section 7 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (Act) ultimately boils down to consent. At its core, an arbitration clause is nothing more than a contractual promise by the parties to resolve their disputes outside the regular court system. But consent isn’t always straightforward. Sometimes parties sign a contract containing a clause that is too weak or tentative to create any real obligation to arbitrate. In other situations, a party may perform extensively under a contract it never signed, leaving the question open whether it is bound by the arbitration clause contained in it. These are two quite different problems, and both come up fairly often in practice.