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The Eternal Debate On External Law In Labor Arbitration: Where We Stand Five Decades After Meltzer V. Howlett, Philip Baldwin

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This article details the oft-debated issue of how labor arbitrators should reconcile collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) with public sources of law, i.e., “external law,” particularly when the plain meaning of a CBA would lead to an arbitration award in contravention of public law. This article traces the origin of the debate back to 1967, when renowned labor arbitrators Robert Howlett and Bernard Meltzer took opposing views on the matter in front of the National Academy of Arbitrators. Although Meltzer’s traditional view, that arbitrators should respect the CBA and ignore the law when the two diverge, may have been the more …