§ 172.033.Rules Referred to in Agreement

One sentence that carries a great deal of the chapter’s practical content.

Referenced rules are part of the agreement. Wherever the chapter speaks of what the parties agreed, the rules they adopted are included.

Nearly every provision in this chapter yields to agreement. The number of arbitrators, the appointment procedure, the challenge procedure, the language, the place, the procedure and the evidence rules are all default settings.

Adopting a set of institutional rules therefore rewrites most of the chapter for that arbitration, in one line of the contract.

That is how international arbitration ordinarily works. Parties choose an institution and its rules, and the governing statute fills the gaps the rules leave.

The section removes an argument. Without it, a party could contend that the statutory default applies because the rules are not the parties’ agreement.

Conciliation rules are covered too, which matters for Subchapter H.

Mandatory provisions are unaffected. Rules cannot displace requirements the chapter does not leave to agreement, such as equal treatment under Section 172.101.

Section 172.007 is the companion. It lets the parties delegate determinations to a third party, which is what choosing an institution does.