Law Commons^™

Unfair By Default: Arbitration's Reverse Default Judgment Problem, Alexi Pfeffer-Gillett

Scholarly Articles

It is a foundational principle of civil law that a defendant who fails to respond to allegations is deemed to have admitted those allegations and can be subjected to default judgment liability. This threat of default judgment incentivizes defendants to respond to claims, thereby discouraging delay tactics and helping ensure cases are resolved efficiently on the merits.

In consumer and employment arbitration, though, the fairness and efficiency benefits of traditional default judgment are flipped, rewarding rather than punishing unresponsive defendants. This difference from civil litigation arises out of arbitration’s fee structures: if a defendant-company fails to pay its share of …

Provisional Measures In Aid Of Arbitration, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The success of the New York Convention has made arbitration a preferred means of dispute resolution for international commercial transactions. Success in arbitration often depends on the extent to which a party may secure assets, evidence, or the status quo between parties prior to the completion of the arbitration process. This makes the availability of provisional measures granted by either arbitral tribunals or by courts fundamental to the arbitration. In this Article, I consider the existing legal framework for provisional measures in aid of arbitration, with particular attention to the sources of the rules providing for such measures. Those sources …

Capitalization Of The Global Green Economy: An Analysis Of South Carolina's Current Foreign Direct Investment Efforts And Suggestions For Continued Sustainability, William E. Hilger

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Arbitration (Tahkim) And Reconciliation (Sulh) In Islam As Alternative Dispute Resolution Mechanisms, Saidilyos Khakimov

The Light of Islam

The main reason behind this work is to illustrate the current need for Islamic alternative dispute resolution methods and offer analysis to show the benefts of their applications. There has been a vivid rise in ADRs’ recognition globally as a substitute for litigation and related issues that would be better if addressed with an Islamic perspective. The wide usage of the term has been intensifed uninterruptedly after the second half of the 20th century. This paper intends to introduce a 1,5-centuryyear-old background of legally institutionalized arbitration
(Tahkim) and reconciliation (Sulh), Islamic means or ways of alternative dispute resolution. I will …

The Rise Of Transnational Commercial Courts: The Astana International Financial Centre Court, Ilias Bantekas

Pace International Law Review

The proliferation of international commercial courts aims to boost income from legal services and serve as a catalyst for newly found rules of law and thus attract investor confidence. The latter is the underlying purpose for the creation of the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) and its Court. The Court’s legal framework is set out in the tradition of its competitors in the Gulf and similarly employs an impressive lineup of former senior judges from the United Kingdom. It is a unique experiment because it strives to create a balance between maintaining a judicial institution of the highest caliber while …

Venezuela Undermines Gold Miner Crystallex's Attempts To Recover On Its Icsid Award, Sam Wesson

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Finding A Forest Through The Trees: Georgia-Pacific As Guidance For Arbitration Of International Compulsory Licensing Disputes, Karen Mckenzie

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

This paper will examine the challenges of international compulsory licensing by examining the issue historically and legally as well as offer possible solutions. Thus, this paper will explore the challenge of balancing corporate interests against the affordability and availability of pharmaceuticals by focusing on discrete situations in developing countries, the history of compulsory licensing, and how the World Health Organization (the “WHO”) and the WTO have attempted to tackle these challenges through compulsory licensing, and it will suggest a possible framework for use in arbitration, which balances equities through a Georgia-Pacific analysis.

Online Dispute Resolution, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This chapter was prepared from a presentation given by the author at the 2019 Summer School in Transnational Commercial Law & Technology, jointly sponsored by the University of Verona School of Law and the Center for International Legal Education (CILE) of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. In the paper, I review online dispute resolution (ODR) by considering the following five questions, which I believe help to develop a better understanding of both the concept and the legal framework surrounding it:

A. What is ODR?

B. Who does ODR?

C. What is the legal framework for ODR?

D. What …

The Case For American Muslim Arbitration, Rabea Benhalim

Publications

This Article advocates for the creation of Muslim arbitral tribunals in the United States. These tribunals would better meet the needs of American Muslims, who currently bring their religious disputes to informal forums that lack transparency. Particularly problematic, these existing forums often apply legal precedent developed in majority-Muslim nations, without taking into consideration the changed circumstances of Muslim living as minorities in the United States. These interpretations of Islamic law can have especially negative impacts on women. American Muslim arbitration tribunals offer the potential to correct these inadequacies. Furthermore, a new arbitral system could better meet the needs of sophisticated …

Manifest Disregard In International Commercial Arbitration: Whether Manifest Disregard Holds, However Good, Bad, Or Ugly, Chad R. Yates

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Manifest disregard is a common law reason for not enforcing an arbitration award. This principle applies when the arbitrator knew and understood the law, but the arbitrator disregarded the applicable law. Presently, the United States Supreme Court has not made a definite decision on whether manifest disregard is still a valid reason for vacating the award (known as “vacatur”), and the Court is highly deferential to arbitrator decisions. Consequently, the lower courts are split on the issue. For international commercial arbitration awards, manifest disregard can only apply to a foreign award that is decided under United States law or in …

Boilerplate’S False Dichotomy, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

The argument against enforcing boilerplate contracts (contracts that no one reads) seems clear. Indeed, if this were a court case we would say that the jury is in; the evidence against boilerplate is overwhelming. Yet the judge has yet to render judgment. Courts continue to enforce boilerplate terms, and even those scholars who have exposed boilerplate as an emperor with no clothes are reluctant to gaze upon its nakedness and condemn its use.

This reluctance originates in an assumption that pervades the boilerplate debate—namely, that courts and commentators alike view boilerplate as necessary to the modern transaction. When asked to …

English Justice For An American Company?, Christopher French

Christopher C. French

The Uberization Of Arbitration Clauses, Jill I. Gross

Arbitration Law Review

No abstract provided.

Consumer Click Arbitration: A Review Of Online Consumer Arbitration Agreements, Jeffrey H. Dasteel

Arbitration Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sharia Law And International Commercial Arbitration: The Need For An Intra-Islamic Arbitral Institution, George Khoukaz

Journal of Dispute Resolution

The goal of this Comment is to address the relationship between Middle-Eastern Islamic countries with the rest of the world from an international commercial arbitration perspective. To do that, we will first briefly address the historic sectarian divide between the two main sects in Islam—Sunna and Shia—which will allow the reader to gain a better understanding of the theoretical differences within Islam, resulting in different legal systems and competing political interests. Section II will also briefly address the modern history of both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran) because these two countries are …

Dismantling Democracy: Common Sense And The Contract Jurisprudence Of Frank Easterbrook, Deborah Post

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Preface To The Gateway Thread, Deborah Post

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Where's The Sense In Hill V. Gateway 2000?: Reflections On The Visible Hand Of Norm Creation, Shubha Ghosh

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cognition And Common Sense In Contract Law, Beverly Horsburgh, Andrew Cappel

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Common Sense, Contracts, And Law And Literature: Why Lawyers Should Read Henry James, Lenora Ledwon

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Common Sense And Contract Law: Fear Of A Normative Planet?, Thomas Joo

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Surveying The Landscape Of Conflict Management, Tom Stipanowich, J. Kwang Ho Lim, E. Y. Park, Beomsu Kim, Joongi Kim

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Vacatur Of Awards Under The Tennessee Uniform Arbitration Act: Substance, Procedure, And Strategies For Practitioners, Steven Feldman

Steven Feldman

Currently, a lively debate exists in the academic community about the fairness of contractual arbitration clauses. The commentators, however, rarely explore the doctrinal aspects of arbitration as found in the Uniform Arbitration Act, the Revised Uniform Arbitration Act, and the Federal Arbitration Act.

This oversight is regrettable because standard form arbitration clauses are a fixture on the current legal landscape and the odds are high that arbitration in its current form will continue for many years to come.

This article analyzes the Tennessee Uniform Arbitration Act (TUAA). One of the most challenging TUAA topics is the action for vacatur (annulment) …

The Customer's Nonwaivable Right To Choose Arbitration In The Securities Industry, Jill I. Gross

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Arbitration has been the predominant form of dispute resolution in the securities industry since the 1980s. Virtually all brokerage firms include predispute arbitration agreements (PDAAs) in their retail customer contracts, and have successfully fought off challenges to their validity. Additionally, the industry has long mandated that firms submit to arbitration at the demand of a customer, even in the absence of a PDAA.

More recently, however, brokerage firms have been arguing that forum selection clauses in their agreements with sophisticated customers (such as institutional investors and issuers) supersede firms’ duty to arbitrate under FINRA Rule 12200. Circuit courts currently are …

Foreign Investment In The People's Republic Of China: Compensation Trade, Joint Ventures, Industrial Property Protection And Dispute Settlement, Kevin K. Maher

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Is The Albert H Kritzer Database Telling Us More Than We Know?, Thomas Neumann

Pace International Law Review

This article is the first in a series of articles attempting to provide a geographical and temporal overview of the application practice of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). In this first article, the success of CISG is explored. The article develops the idea of using the Albert H. Kritzer Database to achieve an overview of the success of the Convention in practice. It is argued that the success of the Convention is useful to measure by its uniformity in practice, and therefore a set of criteria relating to the Convention’s application by …

Consumer Protection, Hijacking And The Concepcion Cases, Brandy G. Robinson

Brandy G Robinson

Since its ruling, AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion has been the subject of scrutiny among many people in both the business and legal industries. The ruling’s significance denotes class arbitration is no longer a viable option in certain types of litigation matters. Yet, courts continue to defy this ruling. Post-Concepcion cases help in exploring why there is such a discord and confusion on whether class arbitration or any class alternative dispute resolution method are allowable.This article briefly examines AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion and post-Concepcion cases and what remains for consumers and consumer law attorneys after Concepcion. The article also provides …

The Problem With Frand: How The Licensing Commitments Of Standard-Setting Organizations Result In The Misvaluing Of Patents, David Arsego

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Standard-setting organizations (SSOs) are bodies that oversee the development of technical standards. Technical standards are common technological designs that are used across a variety of platforms, for instance LTE, which is utilized throughout the mobile phone industry. Members of SSOs contribute different pieces of technology to an ultimate design, and if a patent covers the technology, it is called a standard-essential patent (SEP). SSOs require their members to license these patents to each other on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms. This Note analyzes the FRAND requirement and the different ways that courts and private parties interpret it. The ambiguity …

'Experiential Education Through The Vis Moot' And 'Building On The Bergsten Legacy: The Vis Moot As A Platform For Legal Education', Ronald A. Brand

Articles

Recent discussions of experiential education have at times considered the role of moot opportunities in legal education. Many, if not most, moot courts and related activities have been designed primarily as competitions. One moot, the Willem Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot, is different in that it was designed, and has been consistently administered, as a tool for educating future lawyers. That education has included both skills training of the highest order and the development of a doctrinal understanding of important international legal instruments, especially those created and administered by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). This pair …

Class Actions Suits Vs. Arbitration Clause (Mexico), Jorge E. De Hoyos Walther

Jorge E De Hoyos Walther

On September 24, 2014, the Mexican Supreme Court (SCJN) issued a landmark decision in the world of arbitration and class action suits. In summary, SCJN upheld that it is possible to file a class action suit, even though an arbitration clause is included in the agreement that governs the business relationship