Arbitration and agreement are inter-linked in three respects: (i) the agreement to arbitrate is itself a contract; (ii) there is scope (subject to clear consensual exclusion) in England for monitoring the arbitral tribunal’s fi delity and accuracy in applying substantive English contract law; and (iii) the subject matter of the arbitration is nearly always a ‘contractual’ matter. These three elements underlie this work. They appear as Part I (arbitration is founded on agreement), Part II (monitoring accuracy), and Part III (synopsis of the contractual rules frequently encountered within arbitration). Arbitration Is a Consensual Process . N early all commercial arbitrations arise from an arbitration agreement voluntarily reached by both parties. Occasionally, arbitration is made available under statute and is not voluntary. Another exception is when arbitration is made available under Treaty in favour of third party corporate investors. It can be safely assumed, however, that arbitration has as one of its pillars the fundamental concept of party consent. It is hoped that the wider legal community will fi nd interesting and useful this study of the working out within English law of the notion that arbitration arises from agreement. Monitoring the Tribunal ’ s Application of Contract Law . English law takes seriously (although in a balanced way) the need to maintain links between the practice of arbitral decision-making on points of English contract law and the wider interest of the legal community (a global audience) in studying progress within the substantive body of contract law. This is examined in Part II (notably Chap. 8 ). By contrast, as explained in Chap. 9 , the enforcing court has less opportunity to monitor a foreign arbitral tribunal’s compliance with contract law. Even so, various contractual issues can be examined by the enforcing court: whether the arbitration agreement is valid, what is its scope, and who are the relevant parties.