Law Commons^™

Integrating "Alternative" Dispute Resolution Into Bankruptcy: As Simple (And Pure) As Motherhood And Apple Pie?, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

Today, there can be little doubt that “alternative” dispute resolution is anything but alternative. Nonetheless, many judges, lawyers (and law students) do not truly understand the dispute resolution processes that are available and how they should be used. In the shadow of the current economic crisis, this lack of knowledge is likely to have negative consequences, particularly in those areas of practice such as bankruptcy and foreclosure in which clients, lawyers, regulators, and courts work under pressure, often with inadequate time and financial resources to permit careful analysis of procedural options. Potential negative effects can include: (1) impairment of a …

Les Devoirs De L'Arbitre: Ni Un Pour Tous, Ni Tous Pour Un, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

Fans of the Alexandre Dumas novel Three Musketeers will remember that the adventure includes a fourth young man, d'Artagnan, who hopes to become one of the King’s guards, along with his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, living by the motto “All for one, one for all”. Likewise, an arbitrator’s generally include four key obligation: accuracy, fairness, and efficiency, as well as vigilance in promoting an enforceable award. Prevailing litigants normally hope that the arbitral process will lead to something more than a piece of paper. To this end, they expect arbitrators to avoid giving reasons for annulment or non-recognition to …

Creditor Claims In Arbitration And In Court, Samantha Zyontz, Christopher R. Drahozal

Faculty Scholarship

This article is based on the Interim Report, Creditor Claims in Arbitration and in Court, issued in November 2009 by the Searle Civil Justice Institute's Consumer Arbitration Task Force. It seeks to compare the outcomes of debt collection arbitrations to the outcomes of debt collection cases in court to help in evaluating arbitration as a means of resolving consumer disputes. The arbitration cases examined are debt collection cases administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) as part of its consumer arbitration docket, supplemented by cases brought by a single debt buyer as part of a consumer debt collection program administered …

An Empirical Study Of Aaa Consumer Arbitrations, Samantha Zyontz, Christopher R. Drahozal

Faculty Scholarship

This article extends our knowledge of consumer arbitration by presenting results from the first detailed empirical study of consumer arbitration as administered by the AAA. Primarily using a sample of 301 AAA consumer arbitrations that resulted in an award between April and December 2007, it considers such issues as the costs incurred by consumers in arbitration, the speed of the arbitral process, and the outcomes of the cases-the very topics of most interest in the policy debate.

Non-Signatories And The New York Convention, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

In the context of arbitrations subject to the New York Convention, the term ,non-signatory' might evoke several lines of inquiry. Must commitments to arbitrate be signed? What legal framework guides decision-making about who agreed to arbitrate? How should courts monitor an arbitrator's assertion of jurisdiction over someone who never signed an arbitration agreement?

The second of these matters - rules about who agreed to arbitrate - will retain our attention in this paper. While few commentators deny that arbitration rests on consent,¹ less unanimity exists about what exactly constitutes such consent when one side contests that it ever waived …

Technology Mediated Dispute Resolution Can Improve The Registry Of Interpreters For The Deaf Ethical Practices System: The Deaf Community Is Well Prepared And Can Lead By Example, David Allen Larson, Paula Gajewski Mickelson

Faculty Scholarship

The work of American Sign Language (ASL)/English interpreters is filled with complex interpersonal, linguistic and cultural challenges. The decisions and ethical dilemmas interpreters face on a daily basis are countless and the potential for disagreement regarding those decisions is great. Technology Mediated Dispute Resolution (TMDR) processes can be particularly helpful when misunderstandings and conflicts arise. Technology Mediated Dispute Resolution is a more inclusive phrase than Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) and includes cellular telephones, radio frequency devices, and satellite communication systems. The Deaf Community has learned to adapt and rely upon a variety of technologies and, because many Deaf individuals already …

The Market For Justice, The "Litigation Explosion," And The "Verdict Bubble:" A Closer Look At Vanishing Trials, Frederic N. Smalkin, Frederic N. C. Smalkin

Faculty Scholarship

Recently, a respected jurist has lamented the declining number of federal jury trials. Chief Judge William Young of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, writing in the Federal Lawyer, pointed out that jury trials in federal civil cases declined 26% in the decade between 1989 and 1999, which he attributed to four factors: the district court judiciary’s “loss of focus” on the core function of trying jury cases; the business community’s loss of interest in jury adjudication (“opting out of the legal system altogether” in favor of arbitration); Congress’s “marginalizing the district court judiciary”; and …

An Essay Challenging The Racially Biased Selection Of Arbitrators For Employment Discrimination Suits, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

Since 1991, employers have increasingly decided to require that employees agree to arbitrate statutory employment discrimination claims as a condition of employment. This Essay seeks to expose some of the potential discriminatory components that may arise in the arbitrator selection process while highlighting the lack of legal remedy for those who believe that employers, in conjunction with neutral service provders, have stacked the pool in favor of having arbitrators who tend to be older, white and male. The Essay suggests the use of 42 U.S.C. Section 1981 as a potential remedy and challenge to the dearth of arbitrators of color …

The Place Of Court-Connected Mediation In A Democratic Justice System, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

A justice system, and the processes located within it, ought to deliver justice. That seems simple enough. But, of course, delivering justice is never so simple. Justice and the systems that serve it are the creatures of context.

This Article considers mediation as just one innovation within the much larger evolution of the judicial system of the United States. First, this Article outlines how the values of democratic governance undergird our traditional picture of the American justice system, presumably because the invocation of such values helps the system to deliver something that will be respected by the nation’s citizens as …

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 …

Civil Justice Reform Symposium: Introduction, James F. Hogg

Faculty Scholarship

Many people in the United States are not happy about the way in which litigation proceeds. In a country sometimes thought to be overpopulated with lawyers, either one party or both parties in a significant percentage of civil cases apparently cannot afford, or decline to retain, legal counsel. Financing for legal aid seems to be less than adequate, pro bono services are helping to some extent, but the administration of civil justice is in danger of sinking in the swamp of pro se ("do-it-yourself') litigation. The articles in this symposium discuss ideas for reform, such as introductory resources directed at …

Arbitration In Banking And Finance, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

The world's bifurcation into debtors and creditors has created yet another class of people: those involved in resolving disputes between lenders and borrowers. To promote reliability in financial dispute resolution, credit agreements have generally provided that potential controversies will be submitted either to courts in the bank's home jurisdiction, or to courts of a major money center such as London or New York.

From Star To Supernova To Dark, Cold Neutron Star: The Early Life, The Explosion And The Collapse Of Arbitration, Michael Hunter Schwartz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

L'Arbitrage Et Le Recouvrement Des Prêts Consentis À Des Débiteurs Étrangers, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

L'auteur explore le rile complexe de 'arbitrage dans le rglement des difflrends financiers intemationaux impliquant des dettes privies et publiques. II onus rappelle que le diveloppement 6conomique global bnlficie d'un climat de confiance dons les relations commerciales internationales. Los doctrines juridiques et les procidures qui ajoutent de l'incertitude dans le processus de remboursement des prfts ne peuvent que freiner I'allocation de crdits qui pourraient autrement favoriser le commerce et l'investissement outre-frontikre, particuli~rement dons les pays en vole do diveloppement.

The author explores the complex role of arbitration in the settlement of international financial controversies involving both private and public debt. …

Unions And Urinalysis, Deborah A. Schmedemann

Faculty Scholarship

Many private employers seem to be busy deciding whether and how to test employees for drug use. Presumably most of these decisions are made by management acting alone. However, in unionized workplaces—one out of five private sector employees are represented by unions—federal labor law prescribes a different method. That method features collective bargaining by unions and management to set the rules, the use of a private third-party neutral to resolve disputes which arise under those rules (arbitration), and relatively little involvement by the government (the National Labor Relations Board, legislatures, and the courts). This system that labor law prescribes for …

Bandwagon Is Rolling: Adr Demands And Thrives On Lawyers Creative Thinking, Christine D. Ver Ploeg

Faculty Scholarship

The ADR (alternative dispute resolution) bandwagon is rolling. Clients are becoming disenchanted with traditional litigation, and they're hearing about ADR. ADR has three broad categories: mediation, the mini-trial, and arbitration. Attorneys can provide a real service to clients by being familiar with and developing skills in ADR.

Arbitration Of International Contract Disputes, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

International commercial arbitration has been the victim of its own success. Arbitration is often the only dispute resolution process acceptable in business contexts where parties from different countries have rejected recourse to each other's legal system at the outset of the contractual relationship. For example, when a Swedish shipyard contracts to build tankers for an agency of the Libyan government, the Swedes are unlikely to relish the prospect of appearing before Libyan courts, and the Libyans may view submission to the courts of Sweden (or of another industrialized Western nation) as an affront to Libyan national sovereignty. Neither the Swedish …