Law Commons^™

Bankruptcy’S Uneasy Shift To A Contract Paradigm, David A. Skeel Jr., George Triantis

All Faculty Scholarship

The most dramatic development in twenty-first century bankruptcy practice has been the increasing use of contracts to shape the bankruptcy process. To explain the new contract paradigm—our principal objective in this Article-- we begin by examining the structure of current bankruptcy law. Although the Bankruptcy Code of 1978 has long been viewed as mandatory, its voting and cramdown rules, among others, invite considerable contracting. The emerging paradigm is asymmetric, however. While the Code and bankruptcy practice allow for ex post contracting, ex ante contracts are viewed with suspicion.

We next use contract theory to assess the two modes of contracting. …

Mandatory Predispute Consumer Arbitration, Structural Bias, And Incentivizing Procedural Safeguards, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

Within the past several decades, there has been an explosion in the creation, institutionalization and use of “alternative” dispute resolution procedures. Mandatory predispute arbitration has generated the most controversy because it appears beset with structural bias. The recent cases of AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion and Compucredit Corp. v. Greenwood have raised additional concerns as the Supreme Court has announced that corporations can force consumers to arbitrate their private and statutory claims and give up their rights to pursue class relief. This Article begins by arguing that the Supreme Court’s enthusiastic embrace of mandatory predispute arbitration should be understood primarily …

Advisory Adjudication, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court decision in Camreta v. Greene is revealing. The Court first issues an opinion authorizing appeals by prevailing parties in qualified immunity cases, even though doing so entails the issuance of an advisory opinion that is not necessary to resolution of the dispute between the parties. And the Court then declines to reach the merits of the underlying constitutional claim in the case, because doing so would entail the issuance of an advisory opinion that was not necessary to the resolution of the dispute between the parties. The Court's decision, therefore, has the paradoxical effect of both honoring …

Historical Evolution And Future Of Natural Resources Law And Policy: The Beginning Of An Argument And Some Modest Predictions, Sally K. Fairfax, Helen Ingram, Leigh Raymond

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

8 pages.

Includes bibliographical references

"Sally Fairfax, UC-Berkeley, Helen Ingram, UC-Irvine, and Leigh Raymond, Purdue University" -- Agenda

Judicial Review In The United States And In The Wto: Some Similarities And Differences, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Among international organizations, the World Trade Organization (WTO) is widely credited with having the most effective dispute settlement system. Its highly developed dispute settlement system, which is one of the few in international law to include a standing appellate body, invites comparisons to the institution of judicial review in the United States under the paradigm of Marbury v. Madison. Such a comparison yields insights about both the WTO dispute settlement system and Marbury-style judicial review. This article first notes an important parallel between the two systems: like the WTO, judicial review in the United States began as the …

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 …

The Changing Role Of Labor Arbitration (Symposium: New Rules For A New Game: Regulating Employment Relationships In The 21st Century), Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

A quarter century ago, in a provocative and prophetic article, David E. Feller lamented the imminent close of what he described as labor arbitration's "golden age." I have expressed reservations about that characterization, insofar as it suggested an impending shrinkage in the stature of arbitration. But Professor Feller was right on target in one important respect. Labor arbitration was going to change dramatically from the autonomous institution in the relatively self-contained world of union-management relations which it had been from the end of World War II into the 1970s. When the subject matter was largely confined to union-employer agreements, arbitration …

Gilmer In The Collective Bargaining Context, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Can a privately negotiated arbitration agreement deprive employees of the statutory right to sue in court on claims of discrimination in employment because of race, sex, religion, age, disability, and similar grounds prohibited by federal law? Two leading U.S. Supreme Court decisions, decided almost two decades apart, reached substantially different answers to this questionand arguably stood logic on its head in the process. In the earlier case of Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., involving arbitration under a collective bargaining agreement, the Court held an adverse award did not preclude a subsequent federal court action by the black grievant alleging racial discrimination. …

Judicial Review Of Arbitration Awards On Public Policy Grounds: Lessons From The Case Law, Ann C. Hodges

Law Faculty Publications

A review of the case law demonstrates that most of the labor arbitration awards challenged on public policy grounds involve reinstatement of discharged employees. This article analyzes 138 private sector federal cases in which labor arbitration ·awards have been contested on public policy grounds. All the cases reviewed are discharge cases in which arbitration awards reversing the terminations were challenged. The article attempts to determine the factors that influence courts to uphold or overturn arbitration awards. This analysis will provide assistance to arbitrators in writing opinions that are less subject to challenge, and to employers, unions, and their attorneys in …

Arbitration And Judicial Review, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Other Publications

A quarter century ago, in a presentation at the Academy's annual meeting, I used the phrase "contract reader" to characterize the role an arbitrator plays in construing a collective bargaining agreement. That two-word phrase may be the only thing I ever said before this body that has been remembered. Unfortunately, it is almost invariably misunderstood. Time and again members have reproached me: "What's the big deal about contract reading, anyway? Isn't it just the same as contract interpretation?" Or, more substantively scathing: "Do you really think, Ted, that all you have to do to interpret a labor agreement is to …

Can Buckley Clear Customs?, Harold H. Bruff

Publications

No abstract provided.

Reconsidering The Employment Contract Exclusion In Section 1 Of The Federal Arbitration Act: Correcting The Judiciary's Failure Of Statutory Vision, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The Federal Arbitration Act (the Act), seeks to eliminate centuries of perceived judicial hostility toward arbitration agreements. The Act made written arbitration agreements involving interstate commerce specifically enforceable. It also provided a procedural structure for enforcing awards, which were protected through deferential judicial review. The Act intended to have a wide reach, employing a broad definition of commerce that has presumably grown in breadth along with the expansion of judicial notions of commerce. Although courts applied the Act in tentative and cautious fashion until the 1960's, arbitration gained momentum during the 1970's and the 1980's. Despite growing judicial enthusiasm for …

Deferral To Arbitration And Use Of External Law In Arbitration, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

proper definition of the appropriate roles of arbitrators, administrative agencies and the courts depends in great part on the notion that, generally speaking, in labor relations, the interpretation and application of contracts is for arbitrators, and the interpretation and application of statutes is for the administrative agencies and the courts. Arbitrators deal primarily with contract rights and administrative agencies, like the NLRB and the courts, deal primarily with statutory rights. If that distinction is maintained, the problems of deferral to arbitration and the use of external law in arbitration can be more easily resolved.

Standards For Judicial Review Of Forest Plans: Will The Courts Not See The Forest For The Trees, Wells D. Burgess

The Public Lands During the Remainder of the 20th Century: Planning, Law, and Policy in the Federal Land Agencies (Summer Conference, June 8-10)

50 pages.

Contains 2 attachments.

Judicial Review Of Labor Arbitration Awards: A Second Look At Enterprise Wheel And Its Progeny, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Logic, so the cliche goes, is not the life of the law. But logic is very much like the DNA of the law-the structural principle without which all is sprawl and muddle. In the last ten years a controversy has raged over the role of the labor arbitrator in issuing awards, and the role of the courts in reviewing and enforcing those awards. This controversy has largely taken the form of a continuing debate among scholars and practicing arbitrators at the annual meetings of the National Academy of Arbitrators. With due respect to the thoughtful and experienced persons who have …