Law Commons^™

The Specificity Of International Arbitration: The Case For Faa Reform, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

If a pollster asked a random selection of Americans for a one-line verbal portrait of arbitration, common responses might include the following: (i) private litigation arising for construction and business disputes; (ii) a mechanism to resolve workplace tensions between management and labor; (iii) a process by which finance companies and stock brokers shield themselves from customer complaints; (iv) a way to level the playing field in deciding commercial controversies among companies from different parts of the world; (v) the way big corporations use NAFTA to escape regulation. To some extent all would be correct.'

Unfortunately, these different varieties of arbitration …

First Options, Consent To Arbitration, And The Demise Of Separability: Restoring Access To Justice For Contracts With Arbitration Provisions, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

This article describes the context and current state of the law in this area under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), urges the Court to continue its path toward actual consent to arbitration, and suggests an approach for finally reconciling the tension between Prima Paint and First Options. Part II describes the nature and historical context of the arbitrability problem. Part III focuses specifically on the doctrine of separability, which is the most critical (and most complex) of these exceptions. Part IV discusses the impact on separability of recent U.S. Supreme Court case law, especially the 1995 decision in First Options …