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A Muddy Mess: The Supreme Court’S Jurisprudence On Jurisdiction For Arbitration Matters, Kristen M. Blankley

University of Miami Law Review

The Supreme Court’s 2022 Badgerow v. Waters decision at- tempts to create a bright-line rule regarding access to federal courts to hear arbitration matters. On its face, the Badgerow majority opinion reads like a straightforward exercise in textualism. Badgerow interpreted the judicial test for jurisdiction under the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) provision regarding vacatur differently than it interpreted the jurisdictional test for a motion to compel under a different part of the statute. However, Badgerow leaves courts, which were already struggling to decipher the Supreme Court’s 2009 decision of Vaden v. Discover Bank, with a significant number of outstanding questions. …

Indiana In The Midst Of #Metoo: The Argument For Enforcing Arbitration In Sexual Harassment Claims, Jonathan Cisneros

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This note argues that it is in the best interest of sexual harassment victims and the state of Indiana to not follow suit in passing legislation that prohibits employers from requiring mandatory arbitration in sexual harassment cases. This is based on an analysis of the potential factors underlying Indiana’s current lack of legislative movement, the weight of the arguments for and against mandatory arbitration, and consideration of the preemption issues surrounding state laws banning mandatory arbitration. Part II sets the foundation for this note by laying out the most pertinent parts of the FAA and analyzing how the U.S. Supreme …

You Be The Judge: Analyzing When The Federal Arbitration Act's Judicial Review Standards Apply In State Court, Max Birmingham

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This article addresses whether, when the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) governs an arbitration, the FAA’s judicial review standards apply in state court and preempt application of different state law judicial review standards. This argument proceeds as follows: Part I provides an introduction. Part II analyzes the procedural reform intent of the FAA and why the statute seeks to standardize the arbitration process. Part III reviews the judicial review of arbitration awards as promulgated in Hall Street Associates, L.L.C. v. Mattel, Inc. Part IV reviews the generations of FAA cases which have been held to be preempted by SCOTUS. Part V …

The Paga Saga, Tamar Meshel

Pepperdine Law Review

Employees routinely enter into employment contracts that contain arbitration ‎agreements and prohibit ‎them from bringing class and/or representative actions. These employees may therefore only bring claims against their ‎employers, ‎whether contractual or statutory, in arbitration on an individual basis. Such arbitration agreements and the class/representative action waivers that they contain are enforced nationwide pursuant to the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). In California, however, a judge-made rule (the Iskanian rule) prohibits the enforcement of representative action waivers found in arbitration agreements with respect to employees’ claims of Labor Code violations under California’s Private Attorney General Act (PAGA). A judicial battle is …

In Contracts We Trust (And No One Can Change Their Mind)! There Should Be No Special Treatment For Religious Arbitration, Michael J. Broyde, Alexa J. Windsor

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Express Preclusion Of The Federal Arbitration Act For All Bankruptcy-Related Matters, John R. Hardison

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Article sets forth a more solid justification for bankruptcy courts to refuse to order arbitration of any matter related to and affecting a bankruptcy case through express preclusion. First, this Article describes the historical development of the Supreme Court’s holdings on preclusion of the FAA in general and on the courts of appeals’ current formulation of a bankruptcy exception to the FAA. Next, this Article discusses the statutory, historical, and policy-based support for reading the bankruptcy jurisdictional provisions as creating an express exception to the FAA, or alternatively as supporting an implied exception to the FAA. As discussed, …

Arbitration Agreements – What Is The Employee Actually Signing Up For?, Kennedy Poe

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This note will examine the various effects and implications the Supreme Court’s decision concerning the legality of class action waivers within employee-employer contracts will have on employers, employees, and the contracts made between them. Part I will identify class action waivers within an employment contract’s arbitration agreement and will further elaborate upon the legal implications of such waivers being present in the contract. Part II will then discuss the history of the NLRA and assess its present-day role in employee–employer contract formation, in order to provide clarity as to the dispute that has arisen between the NLRA and class action …

Two Bites At The Apple: The Prejudicial Burden In Arbitration Waiver, Alexander H. Weathersby

Georgia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Uncertain Status Of The Manifest Disregard Standard One Decade After Hall Street, Stuart M. Boyarsky

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) enables parties to obtain quick and final resolution to disputes without incurring the costs, delays, and occasional publicity of litigation. Indeed, section 10 of the FAA enumerates four specific grounds on which courts may vacate arbitral awards: corruption, fraud, impartiality, and misconduct or incompetence. Yet over the past 60 years, a debate has raged over the existence of an additional ground: the arbitrator’s manifest disregard of the law.

The Supreme Court first enounced this standard in dicta in its 1953 decision in Wilko v. Swan. Over next four decades, every federal circuit court slowly …

Class Dismissed: Compelling A Look At Jurisprudence Surrounding Class Arbitration And Proposing Solutions To Asymmetric Bargaining Power Between Parties, Matthew R. Hamielec

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Class actions and arbitrations have existed since the United States’ inception. Since the mid-twentieth century, both Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have helped arbitration blossom from litigation’s overshadowed alternative to a prominent means of resolving disputes. Soon, the commercial industry proceeded to incorporate arbitration provisions in their consumer and employment contracts. That way, when a dispute arose between the business and a person, the business would arbitrate with claimants individually. Plaintiffs’ attorneys who favored collective action proceedings like class actions, however, pushed for courts’ allowance of class arbitration—a class proceeding conducted within an arbitration’s confines.

Corporations litigated such class …

Directv, Inc. V. Imburgia And The Continued Ascendance Of Federal Common Law: Class-Action Waivers And Mandatory Arbitration Under The Federal Arbitration Act, Michael J. Yelnosky

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Arbitration Law In Tension After Hall Street: Accuracy Of Finality?, Stanley A. Leasure

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Changing The Game: The Effects Of The 2012 Revision Of The Icc Arbitration Rules On The Icc Model Arbitration Clause For Trust Disputes, Colin Connor

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Does Rigorously Enforcing Arbitration Agreements Promote “Autonomy”?, Hiro N. Aragaki

Indiana Law Journal

In recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court has helped transform arbitration law into a radical private-ordering regime in which freedom of contract has come to eclipse public regulation. Arbitration jurisprudence justifies this transformation in part on a profound and longstanding commitment to the ideal of individual autonomy, understood as the freedom—lacking in litigation—to select a disputing process best suited to one’s needs.

In this Article, I question the cogency of this justification. I argue, first, that autonomy has had different and sometimes conflicting meanings even within arbitration jurisprudence. Second, depending on the meaning one ascribes to autonomy, it is at …

Oh, Won't You Stay With Me?: Determining Whether § 3 Of The Faa Requires A Stay In Light Of Katz V. Cellco Partnership, Alessandra Rose Johnson

Fordham Law Review

The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) provides the legal framework to render international and interstate arbitration agreements judicially enforceable in the United States. In furtherance of that goal, it provides that, if a party initiates litigation rather than arbitration of an arbitrable dispute, either party may request that the court stay the litigation pending resolution in an arbitration proceeding. The U.S. courts of appeals are currently split as to whether § 3 of the FAA requires a court under these circumstances to stay the action or whether the court has the discretion to dismiss the action altogether. In Katz v. Cellco …

Reforming The Federal Arbitration Act To Equalize The Adjudication Rights Of Powerful And Weak Parties, Stephen A. Plass

Catholic University Law Review

Providing an extensive historical overview of federal arbitration jurisprudence and the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), this article argues that the Supreme Court has misinterpreted FAA provisions and goals, thereby drastically changing the law of labor arbitration to the detriment of American workers and consumers. Namely, original congressional policy goals (providing speedy, fair and informal alternatives to court adjudication) have been countermanded by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of arbitration law over the last 50 years. As a result, modern arbitration law sets up an imbalance of power between employers/merchants and workers/consumers who are forced into lengthy and expensive procedures before they …

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 …

Inetianbor And Green: How Two Payday Loan Disputes Illustrate The Integrality Rule’S Incompatibility With The Faa, Cameron C. Lincoln

Journal of Dispute Resolution

The integrality rule is a rule grounded in the analysis of party intent and allows for an arbitration agreement to be vitiated if the selected forum is unavailable and the forum was integral to the agreement. The integrality rule, conceived in 1990, has a short history, and while it is followed by several federal appellate circuits, it is not consistently named or referenced. The Eleventh Circuit applied the rule in Inetianbor v. CashCall, Inc., where the court precluded arbitration due to the integrality rule. This case raises questions of whether the integrality rule contradicts the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), whether …

Do Judicially Created Grounds For Vacating Arbitral Awards Still Exist?: Why Manifest Disregard Of The Law And Public Policy Exceptions Should Be Considered Under Vacatur, Ashley K. Sundquist

Journal of Dispute Resolution

The Court’s strong language in Hall Street indicated the Court’s intent for the FAA to provide the exclusive grounds for vacating an arbitral award. Therefore, once the Court addresses the circuit split, it will likely hold that judicially created grounds are not an acceptable form of vacatur. However, doing so would cause individuals injustice, in particular where awards manifestly disregard the law and go against public policy. This Note argues that if the Court abolishes judicially created grounds, it should reinterpret the FAA to include manifest disregard of the law and violations to public policy under the exceeded powers exception …

"Horton And The Who": Determining Who Is Affected By The Emerging Statutory Battle Between The Faa And Federal Labor Law, James R. Montgomery

Journal of Dispute Resolution

In the early 20th century, social changes brought about a system designed to protect employees. As part of the American system of labor laws, workers are given certain rights to proceed collectively, to "band together," and to proceed as a unit. Labor laws were first enacted in the United States during a period of Supreme Court jurisprudence that granted a broad array of powers to corporations, in the form of "liberty of contract." Justice Holmes dissented in Lochner v. New York, and planted a seed in his opinion that would later go on to support the idea behind federal labor …

“Final” Awards Reconceptualized: A Proposal To Resolve The Hall Street Circuit Split, Matthew J. Brown

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This article discusses the current circuit split over the continued validity of manifest disregard of the law (“manifest disregard”) as a nonstatutory ground for vacatur of arbitration awards under the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”). Today, as commercial parties decide whether to include arbitration agreements in their business contracts, they weigh the risks of proceeding to arbitration versus litigation to resolve their disputes. This topic is especially pertinent in light of the current economic climate. Dicta from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hall Street Associates, L.L.C. v. Mattel, Inc. called into question the continued validity of nonstatutory grounds for vacatur. …

There Has Been A Misconcepcion: The Faa Does Not Foster The Waiver Of Statutory Rights: Reyes V. Liberman Broad, Inc., Joanna L. Byrne

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This paper first discusses the particular facts and proceedings in Reyes. Next, it will discuss the complicated legal landscape that affects the interpretation of class arbitration waivers in California. Then, this paper will analyze the California Court of Appeals' rationale for its holding in Reyes. Next, this paper will construct an argument in favor of allowing employees to maintain bargaining rights in some circumstances, despite the existence of a class arbitration waiver in an employment contract. Finally, this paper will explore outside factors that may affect the Supreme Court of California's ability to render a decision and analyze how the …

Faa Versus The Magnuson - Moss Warranty Act: Which Warrants Precedence, The, Tyler Beckerle

Journal of Dispute Resolution

These questions have proven to be a formidable foe for the judiciary. Moreover, courts and commentators have been divided as to what answer will produce the best policy. In 2002, the discussion seemed to be headed toward conclusion after the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits found that the FAA should trump the MMWA in the event of statutory conflict. However, with the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Kolev v. Euromotors West/The Auto Gallery, this polarizing issue has once again become a focus in American jurisprudence. While the Ninth Circuit has recently withdrawn Kolev sua sponte, it is doubtful that the Ninth Circuit …

Arbitration Agreements That Discriminate In The Selection And Appointment Of Arbitrators, Jeff Dasteel

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

No abstract provided.

Unconscionable Construction: How The Ninth Circuit Evades The Faa By Severing Arbitration Agreements As Unconscionable Note, Daniel B. Mitchell

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Bridge Fund Capital Corp. v. FastBucks Franchise Corp. illustrates a recent manifestation of an ongoing judicial hostility to arbitration. As the Supreme Court has developed its FAA jurisprudence to limit the severance of arbitration agreements, many lower courts have continued to develop legal justifications to circumvent these restrictions. The FAA's savings clause does afford some latitude for severance of arbitration agreements, but the Supreme Court has not yet defined the limits of the savings clause, nor whether the general contract defense and their justifications are sufficient to supersede FAA policy. Bridge Fund shows how the doctrine of unconscionability it being …

De Novo A No No: Contractually Expanded Judicial Review Clauses Do Not Preclude Faa Application In State Court Unless The Parties Make It Intentionally Clear The Faa Does Not Apply In Their Agreement - Raymond James Fin. Servs., Inc. V. Honea, Tom Swoboda

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This Note addresses a recent Alabama Supreme Court decision concerning the issue of contracted appellate review in arbitration agreements. After analyzing the history of enforcement of arbitration agreements between contracting parties in U.S. Supreme Court precedent, this Note will explore the most recent Supreme Court decision regarding when parties may seek judicial review of arbitration awards. The Federal Arbitration Act's (FAA) preemptive effect over state court law will also be addressed, as the Supreme Court was not thoroughly explanatory on the issue. This Note will also evaluate and compare another state court ruling in Pennsylvania on the same judicial review …

Obituary For The Federal Arbitration Act: An Older Cousin To Modern Civil Procedure, An, Imre S. Szalai

Journal of Dispute Resolution

In order to explore the different ways in which the FAA is related to the development of modern civil procedure, this article is divided into four main parts. first, this article discusses how the FAA is related to the Judiciary Act of 1925. Second, this article focuses on the FAA's relationship to the enactment of the Rules Enabling Act and the related adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Third, this article discusses how the Supreme Court's transformation of the doctrine of personal jurisdiction in International Shoe is related to the enactment of the FAA. Fourth, this article discusses …

On The Continued Vitality Of Securities Arbitration: Why Reform Efforts Must Not Preclude Predispute Arbitration Clauses, Alicia J. Surdyk

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Irreconcilable Deferences - The Troubled Marriage Of Judicial Review Standards Under The Steelworkers Trilogy And The Federal Arbitration Act, Michael H. Leroy

Journal of Dispute Resolution

To explore the ramifications of this hybrid, labor-employment discrimination award, I ask what standards would a court apply to review an arbitrator's ruling. The Steelworker's Trilogy-three Supreme Court decisions that explain to courts how to review awards under section 301 of the Labor-Management Relations Act-pronounce deferential standards. But until now, individual employment awards have typically been reviewed under section 10 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) or state law equivalents. My research on labor awards and individual employment awards show that courts do not behave the same under these different regimes. They enforce about seventy-two percent of labor awards, but …

Third Circuit Buyers Beware: District Court In Litman Holds Unconscionability Defense Contravened By Federal Arbitration Act, David C. Winters

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Without even knowing it, just about everyone has agreed to settle disputes through arbitration and has waived any rights to proceed on a class-wide basis. While many consumers do not read the fine print in the agreements they sign, a variety of companies, from cell phone providers to car dealers, have consumers agree in sales contracts to arbitrate any claims and to waive the ability to proceed with a class action claim. This was the scenario in the case of Litman v. Cellco Partnership, in which a New Jersey federal district court held that the plaintiff cell phone customers could …