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 …

Adversarial Failure, Benjamin P. Edwards

Washington and Lee Law Review

Investors, industry firms, and regulators all rely on vital public records to assess risk and evaluate securities industry personnel. Despite the information’s importance, an arbitration-facilitated expungement process now regularly deletes these public records. Often, these arbitrations recommend that public information be deleted without any true adversary ever providing any critical scrutiny to the requests. In essence, poorly informed arbitrators facilitate removing public information out of public databases. Interventions aimed at surfacing information may yield better informed decisions. Although similar problems have emerged in other contexts when adversarial systems break down, the expungement process to purge information about financial professionals provides …

Judging Third-Party Funding, Victoria Shannon Sahani

Scholarly Articles

Third-party funding is an arrangement whereby an outside entity finances the legal representation of a party involved in litigation or arbitration. The outside entity – called a “third-party funder” – could be a bank, hedge fund, insurance company, or some other entity or individual that finances the party's legal representation in return for a profit. Third-party funding is a controversial, dynamic, and evolving phenomenon. The practice has attracted both national headlines and the recent attention of the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The Advisory Committee recently declared that “judges currently have the power to obtain information …

Stayin’ Alive?: Bg Group, Plc V. Republic Of Argentina And The Vitality Of Host-Country Litigation Requirements In Investment Treaty Arbitration, Stephen R. Halpin Iii

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Exceeding Their Powers: A Critique Of Stolt-Nielsen And Manifest Disregard, And A Proposal For Substantive Arbitral Award Review, Patrick Sweeney

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Icsid Effect? Considering Potential Variations In Arbitration Awards, Susan D. Franck

Scholarly Articles

The legitimacy of the World Bank's dispute resolution body - The International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) - is a matter of heated debate. Some states have alleged that ICSID is biased, withdrawn from the ICSID Convention, and advocated creating alternative arbitration systems. Using pre-2007 archival data of the population of then- known arbitration awards, this Article quantitatively assesses whether ICSID arbitration awards were substantially different from arbitration awards rendered in other forums. The Article examines variation in the amounts claimed and outcomes reached to evaluate indicators of bias. The results indicated that there was no reliable …

Southland Corp. V. Keating, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Scherk V. Alberto-Culver Co., Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.