This article discusses arbitration in England from the 10th to the late 19th centuries and briefly compares that process to contemporary mediation in the United States. The author outlines the history of arbitration in England, including the concept of "loveday" proceedings, in which "disputants sought reconciliation" (p.942) in the early medieval ages. This process focused on love more than the actual law but lost popularity in the 15th century with the rise of individual rights and fears of corruption and was not used at all by the end of the seventeenth century. The author discusses the emergence of pseudo-adjudicative arbitration, early commercial arbitration, the institutionalization of court-sponsored arbitration (through such measures as the Arbitration Act of 1698), and various issues related to arbitration throughout its development. According to the article, "by the twentieth century, the courts had lost most commercial litigation to arbitral tribunals" (p.1009) and "by the mid twentieth century, arbitration had assumed most of the characteristics of formal adversarial adjudication in a court of Law" (p. 1010). The author then compares English arbitration to contemporary mediation in the United States and conclude that its best chance of survival as a conciliatory form of alternative dispute resolution is to separate itself from the court system (p.1015).