Law Commons^™

Arbitration's Unraveling, Myriam E. Gilles

Articles

It has been over a decade since the Supreme Court declared that the Federal Arbitration Act preempts state-law policies that stand as an obstacle to enforcement of the class-banning arbitration clauses that companies tuck into standard-form contracts. In that time, plaintiffs’ lawyers have tried challenging class action–banning arbitration provisions on myriad legal grounds, as well as pressing for federal and state legislation to undo the Court’s ruling in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion. Neither strategy has borne much fruit—until now. In the past few years, congressional action has exempted specific categories of cases from mandatory arbitration, suggesting that an area-by-area …

Carrie Menkel-Meadow: Dispute Resolution In A Feminist Voice, Andrea Kupfer Schneider

Articles

The presence of women in the law has changed the law’s substance, practice, and process. Carrie Menkel-Meadow, whose scholarship centers on this theme, is one such revolutionary woman.

Professor Menkel-Meadow, who I am proud to call my colleague, co-author, and friend (hereinafter referred to as Carrie), began her career in 1977 with a series of simple questions that sparked a breathtaking body of work. Carrie probed the depth of male domination in the realm of law and wondered what changes female representation might engender. In particular, she focused her inquiry on the value orientation each respective gender might bring to …

The Amazing Carrie Menkel-Meadow And What Wins When Passions Collide, Lela Love

Articles

Carrie Menkel-Meadow (sometimes referred to as “Carrie” herein) is famous in the dispute resolution world as one of the field’s founders. Her prolific writing on dispute resolution—negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and the variants of these major processes—evidences an unrivaled passion for the subject. A renaissance thinker, her intellectual explorations also extend to other areas such as women’s rights and restorative justice for victims of egregious wrongs.

Her multiple passions sometimes create dynamic tensions. For example, what happens if mediation norms threaten a woman’s rights? Or if mediators divert the focus of a dispute resolution process to the future, neglecting a horrific …

Unwaivable: Public Enforcement Claims And Mandatory Arbitration, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary Friedman

Articles

This essay, written for a conference on the “pathways and hurdles” that lie ahead in consumer litigation, is the first to examine the implications of California’s recent jurisprudence holding public enforcement claims unwaivable in standard-form contracts of adhesion, and the inevitable clash with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisional law interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act. With its rich history of rebuffing efforts to deprive citizens of public rights through private contract, California provides an ideal laboratory for exploring this escalating conflict.

The New Qui Tam: A Model For The Enforcement Of Group Rights In A Hostile Era, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary Friedman

Articles

The present Administration has made clear it has no interest in enforcing statutes designed to protect workers, consumers, voters, and others. And, as we have chronicled in prior work, the ability of private litigants to enforce these laws has been undercut by developments in the case law concerning class actions—particularly class-banning arbitration clauses. As these critical enforcement methods recede, will alternative methods of prosecuting claims arise? How might they work? Are they politically and fiscally sustainable? We focus here on a promising approach just now coming into view: qui tam legislation authorizing private citizens to bring representative claims on behalf …

From The Frontlines Of The Modern Movement To End Forced Arbitration And Restore Jury Rights, F. Paul Bland, Myriam E. Gilles, Tanuja Gupta

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Access: Examining Concerted State/Private Enforcement Solutions To Class Action Bans, Myriam E. Gilles

Articles

Procedural and substantive constraints on the ability of ordinary people to access the civil justice system have become all too commonplace. The “justice gap” owes much to cuts in funding for legal aid and court administration, heightened pleading standards, ever-rising costs of discovery, increasingly restrictive views on standing to sue, and the co-opting of small claims court by businesses seeking to collect debts, among other obstacles in the path to the courthouse. But the most consequential impediment, surely, is the enforcement of mandatory arbitration clauses with class action bans, which bar consumers and employees from bringing or being represented in …

The Day Doctrine Died: Private Arbitration And The End Of Law, Myriam E. Gilles

Articles

This story begins in 1980, when a budding anti-lawsuit movement found an energetic champion in a new conservative President. Over time, the movement became a dominant feature of political life, as its narrative of activist judges, jackpot justice, and a thriving lawsuit industry stirred partisan passions. And yet, some thirty years on, it is clear that the primary legacy of the anti-lawsuit movement is the movement itself--not legislative achievements, which have been few and far between, but committed adherents, including future Supreme Court Justices, lower court judges, and business leaders.

Meanwhile, and also in the early 1980s, federal courts began …

Individualized Injunctions And No-Modification Terms: Challenging "Anti-Reform" Provisions In Arbitration Clauses, Myriam E. Gilles

Articles

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors have considered only whether class actions for monetary damages may be barred by arbitration clauses requiring individual adjudication. The Justices have not examined the enforceability of arbitration clauses or arbitral rules which explicitly prohibit claimants from seeking or arbitrators from granting broad injunctive relief in an individual dispute. I term these "anti-reform" provisions because they broadly prohibit an individual arbitral claimant from seeking to end a practice, change a rule, or enjoin an act that causes injury to itself and to similarly-situated non-parties. This …

Operation Arbitration: Privatizing Medical Malpractice Claims, Myriam E. Gilles

Articles

Binding arbitration is generally less available in tort suits than in contract suits because most tort plaintiffs do not have a pre-dispute contract with the defendant, and are unlikely to consent to arbitration after the occurrence of an unforeseen injury. But the Federal Arbitration Act applies to all "contract[s] evincing a transaction involving commerce, " including contracts for healthcare and medical services. Given the broad trend towards arbitration in nearly every other business-to-consumer industry, coupled with some rollbacks in tort reform measures that have traditionally favored medical professionals in the judicial system, it is very possible that we may witness …

Crowd-Classing Individual Arbitrations In A Post-Class Action Era, Myriam E. Gilles, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

Class actions are in decline, while arbitration is ascendant. This raises the question: will plaintiffs' lawyers skilled in bringing small value, large-scale litigation-the typical consumer, employment, and antitrust claims that have made up the bulk of class action litigation over the past forty years-hit upon a viable business model which would allow them to arbitrate one-on-one claims efficiently and profitably? The obstacles are tremendous: without some means of recreating the economies of scale and reaping the fees provided by the aggregative device of Rule 23, no rational lawyer would expend the resources to develop and arbitrate individual, small-value claims against …

Screening Out Innovation: The Merits Of Meritless Litigation, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

Courts and legislatures often conflate merit-less and frivolous cases when balancing the desire to keep courthouse doors open to novel or unlikely claims against the concern that entertaining ultimately unsuccessful litigation will prove too costly for courts and defendants. Recently, significant procedural and substantive barriers to civil litigation have been informed by judicial and legislative assumptions about the costs of entertaining merit-less and frivolous litigation. The prevailing wisdom is that eliminating merit-less and frivolous claims as early in a case’s trajectory as possible will focus scarce resources on the truly meritorious cases, thereby ensuring that available remedies are properly distributed …

Killing Them With Kindness: Examining "Consumer-Friendly" Arbitration Clauses After At&T Mobility V. Concepcion, Myriam E. Gilles

Articles

The article focuses on the U.S. Supreme Court case AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, in which California's "Discover Bank rule" was struck by the Court under the Federal Arbitration Act, which was upheld by the California Supreme Court in the court case Discover Bank v. Superior Court. It provides information that the rule is a judge-made rule which depicts that class action waivers are unforceable in arbitration agreements if such agreements are mentioned in standard form consumer contracts.

After Class: Aggregate Litigation In The Wake Of At&T Mobility V Concepcion, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary Friedman

Articles

Class actions are on the ropes. Courts in recent years have ramped up the standards governing the certification of damages classes and created new standing requirements for consumer class actions. Most recently, in Wal-Mart v Dukes, the Supreme Court articulated a new and highly restrictive interpretation of the commonality requirement of Rule 23(a). But all of this pales in comparison to the Court's April 2011 decision in AT&T Mobility v Concepcion, broadly validating arbitration provisions containing class action waivers. The precise reach of Concepcion warrants close scrutiny. Our analysis suggests that following Concepcion, some plaintiffs will be able to successfully …

Tribal Rituals Of The Mdl: A Comment On Williams, Lee, And Borden, Repeat Players In Multidistrict Litigation, Myriam E. Gilles

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Wisdom Of Crowds? Groupthink And Nonprofit Governance, Melanie B. Leslie

Articles

Scandals involving nonprofit boards and conflicts of interest continue to receive considerable public attention. Earlier this year, for example, musician Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti charity became the target of intense criticism after the charity disclosed that it had regularly transacted business with Jean and entities controlled by Jean and other directors. Although scandals caused by self-dealing undermine public confidence in the charitable sector, they continue to erupt. Why do charitable boards sanction transactions with insiders?

This Article argues that much of the blame lies with the law itself. Because fiduciary duty law is currently structured as a set of fuzzy …

Which Means To An End Under The Uniform Mediation Act, Andrea Kupfer Schneider

Articles

No abstract provided.

Unfriendly Actions: The Amicus Brief Battle At The Wto, Andrea Kupfer Schneider

Articles

No abstract provided.

Enforceability Of Agreements To Arbitrate: An Examination Of The Public Policy Defense, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

This Article seeks to demonstrate that the public policy of doctrine should be, and in general has been, limited to two types of cases. First, as already discussed, an agreement to arbitrate should not be enforced when the statute or case law principle at issue has aims other than promoting justice between the parties. Second, when a party to the agreement belongs to a class peculiarly subject to imposition by the class to which the other party belongs, an agreement to arbitrate will not and should not be enforced.

In the latter class of cases, the susceptibility to imposition may …