Law Commons^™

Ending A Mud Bowl: Defining Arbitration’S Finality Through Functional Analysis, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) and Uniform Arbitration Act (UAA), on the state level, prescribe a nearly identical procedural and remedial scheme for promoting independent, self-contained arbitration. To that end, both acts curtail courts' review of arbitration awards, by limiting the grounds for vacating awards to those aimed at ensuring only basic procedural fairness. Nonetheless, seemingly "pro-arbitration" impulses have driven some courts' eager application, or misapplication, of the FAA/UAA statutory scheme to enforce dispute resolution agreements that reject the acts' limited review prescriptions. This Article tackles this arguable abuse of the FAA/UAA scheme, by proposing a functional analysis for defining …