Short answer. Article 2046 does not itself lay out arbitration procedure; it delegates that job to whatever rules of court the Supreme Court issues. Today that delegation is filled by Republic Act No. 9285, the Alternative Dispute Resolution Act of 2004, and the Special ADR Rules the Supreme Court adopted under it.
What the law says
The appointment of arbitrators and the procedure for arbitration shall be governed by the provisions of such rules of court as the Supreme Court shall promulgate.
Civil Code, Article 2046 — Arbitration Procedure Is Governed by Supreme Court Rules. Read the full provision →
Why the Code left arbitration procedure open
Article 2046 sits at the end of the Civil Code's title on compromises and arbitration, and it does something the rest of the title does not: instead of prescribing how arbitrators are chosen or how a proceeding is conducted, it hands that job to the Supreme Court.
The drafters of the 1949 Civil Code treated arbitration procedure as closer to court administration and evidentiary practice than to substantive civil law, so instead of freezing detailed steps into the statute, they built in a standing delegation that could be updated by the Court without a new law each time practice needed to change.
What fills that gap today
The rules the Supreme Court has promulgated under this delegation are no longer scattered practice directives. Congress passed Republic Act No. 9285, the Alternative Dispute Resolution Act of 2004, to give arbitration a comprehensive statutory framework, and the Supreme Court followed it with the Special ADR Rules, which govern how arbitration-related petitions are filed, heard, and enforced in Philippine courts. Together these instruments now supply the appointment and procedural mechanics that Article 2046 anticipated but deliberately left unwritten, so an arbitration agreement today is procedurally governed far beyond what the bare text of the Code sets out.
What this means for parties who agree to arbitrate
For someone drafting or relying on an arbitration clause, Article 2046 is a reminder that the Civil Code sets the ground rules for when an arbitration agreement is valid, but the mechanics of running the process itself come from elsewhere. How an arbitrator is appointed if the parties cannot agree on one, how a hearing is scheduled and conducted, and how an award is confirmed, vacated, or enforced in court are all questions answered by the ADR Act and the Special ADR Rules rather than by the Civil Code. Because none of that mechanical detail is fixed in the Civil Code, a party who assumes the bare text of Article 2046 is the complete rulebook risks being caught off guard by requirements found only in the ADR Act and the Special ADR Rules, from mandatory notice periods to the specific court where a petition to vacate or confirm an award must be filed.
Where arbitration fits among the Code's dispute-resolution tools
Compromises and arbitration are grouped together in the same title of the Code because both let parties resolve a dispute without going through a full trial. Article 2046 closes that title by pointing arbitration toward the procedural rules that let it actually function, rather than leaving each arbitration agreement to improvise its own process from scratch or borrow ordinary litigation rules that were never designed for it.
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 2046 — Arbitration Procedure Is Governed by Supreme Court Rules
- Civil Code, Article 2045 — Void Arbitrator-Selection Clause
- Civil Code, Article 2047 — Guaranty and Suretyship