§ 173.004.Common Law Preserved

The savings clause, and the last section of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code.

The chapter is cumulative. It adds to the law relating to common law arbitration rather than replacing it.

Nothing else is abrogated or repealed, except as this chapter specifically provides.

What it specifically provides is one thing. Section 173.001 abrogates the rule against specific enforcement of an executory arbitration agreement, and the chapter goes no further.

The rest of common law arbitration survives intact. How such an arbitration is conducted, what an award means and how it is challenged remain matters of decisional law.

That is the difference from Chapter 171. The statutory chapter supplies a complete framework — appointment, hearing, award, confirmation, vacatur and appeal — while this one supplies enforceability alone.

Parties choosing common law arbitration are choosing that difference. They accept less statutory structure in exchange for a process of their own design.

The section also preserves alternatives. A nonprofit could write a Chapter 171 arbitration clause instead, and nothing here prevents it.

Ending the code on a savings clause is fitting. The Civil Practice and Remedies Code is a codification, and its last sentence declines to sweep away what it did not restate.