Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Law
Confronting Adr Agreements' Contract/No-Contract Conundrum With Good Faith, Amy J. Schmitz
Confronting Adr Agreements' Contract/No-Contract Conundrum With Good Faith, Amy J. Schmitz
Faculty Publications
This Article explores the intricate problem, or conundrum, of enforcing "Alternative Dispute Resolution ('ADR') agreements" that require mediation or other non-binding dispute resolution procedures. Although public policy supports ADR, courts' inadequate analysis of ADR agreements is threatening their vitality. Instead of properly considering the flexible nature of these agreements, courts assume formalist contract or no-contract conclusions similar to those they impose on what Professor Charles Knapp has termed "contracts to bargain." ADR agreements and other contracts to bargain pose enforcement problems because they require parties' cooperation without specifying what cooperation means or how to enforce such flexible duties. This Article …
Litigation And The Optimal Combination Of Vague And Precise Clauses In Contracts, Alvaro E. Bustos
Litigation And The Optimal Combination Of Vague And Precise Clauses In Contracts, Alvaro E. Bustos
Faculty Working Papers
In this paper we determine the optimal combination of precise and vague clauses written in contracts when the parties face writing and enforcement costs, the second ones in the form of litigation. We show that the parties may prefer to write vague instead of precise clauses not only because they are cheaper to write but also because they are cheaper to enforce. We extend Battigalli and Maggi (2002) to model the decision of a principal who chooses clauses to describe the actions that an agent has to perform. As both players observe nature imperfectly they may call for a court …
Mandating Minimum Quality In Mass Arbitration, Jeffrey W. Stempel
Mandating Minimum Quality In Mass Arbitration, Jeffrey W. Stempel
Scholarly Works
The Supreme Court's decision in McMahon and its progeny has led many businesses and employers to embrace what was once deemed a localized, industry-specific practice. The "new" or "mass arbitration" only mildly resembles the traditional system employed by niches in industry for settling commercial matters among commercial actors. While the "old" system involved parties who were relatively equal in bargaining power and knowledge, these systems for mass arbitration lack a freely entered bargain and resemble more closely, contracts of adhesion. Privatized arbitration resolves issues of both statutory and substantive law, and there is a strong argument, given the inexperience of …