Law Commons^™

Examining The International Judicial Function: International Courts As Dispute Resolvers, Anna Spain

Publications

This article examines the judicial function of international courts by considering both what it is and what it ought to be. The article identifies and describes two distinct functions - dispute settlement and peace promotion - and explores the tensions that exist in pursuing these two aims. It then introduces a third way of understanding the international judicial function that respects international courts’ traditional role as dispute settlers while allowing for their more engaged and proactive function as peacemakers. This third approach conceptualizes that the role of international courts is to resolve disputes. Doing so requires understanding courts as entities …

Apportioning Responsibility Among Joint Tortfeasors For International Law Violations, Roger P. Alford

Journal Articles

With the new wave of claims against corporations for human rights violations – particularly in the context of aiding and abetting government abuse – there are unusually difficult problems of joint tortfeasor liability. In many circumstances, one tortfeasor – the corporation – is a deep-pocketed defendant, easily subject to suit, but only marginally involved in the unlawful conduct. Another tortfeasor – the sovereign – is a central player in the unlawful conduct, but, with limited exceptions, is immune from suit under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. A third tortfeasor – the low-level security personnel – accused of actually committing the …

Overview Of International Arbitration In The Intellectual Property Context, Kenneth R. Adamo

Global Business Law Review

Resolving intellectual property rights (“IPR”) issues through alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”) proceedings was a technique long-developing in many major countries. Despite the earlier presence of the Arbitration Act in United States law, the subject of use of arbitration in IPR situations, especially regarding U.S. patents, remained an open and contested issue, until the original addition of 35 U.S.C. § 294 to the U.S. Patent Act in 1982. U.S. law is now resolved in the availability of IPR arbitration as an ADR tool, either through a “pre-problem” contract, such as a license, or as a “post-problem” mechanism elected and/or established by …

How Developing Countries Can Adapt Current Bilateral Investment Treaties To Provide Benefits To Their Domestic Economies, Joshua Boone

Global Business Law Review

Bilateral investment treaties (hereinafter "BIT") have been created with the goal of promoting economic prosperity through the facilitation of international investment flows. The idea was to facilitate these investment flows by the opening up of secure channels for foreign direct investment (hereinafter "FDI"), stabilizing the investment climate, granting protective investment guarantees, and providing neutral dispute mechanisms for "injured" investors. Since their inception in 1959, BITs have experienced a "massive and sudden proliferation . . . which has been . . . a 'remarkable' event in international law[,]" and as of the end of 2008, there were over 2,600 BITs in …

Regulating Mandatory Arbitration, Thomas V. Burch

Scholarly Works

Over the last twenty-five years, the Supreme Court has relied on party autonomy and the national policy favoring arbitration to expand the Federal Arbitration Act’s scope beyond Congress’s original intent. Choosing these loaded premises has allowed the Court to reach the outcomes it desires while denying that it is making any political or moral judgments in its decisions – a type of bureaucratic formalism. One controversial outcome of the Court’s formalism, overall, has been the increased prevalence of mandatory arbitration. Although it reduces judicial caseloads and lowers companies’ dispute-resolution costs, it also restricts or eliminates individual rights and reduces public …

The Settlement Of Investor State Disputes And China New Developments On Icsid Jurisdiction, Jane Y. Willems

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

Final Offer Arbitration And Major League Baseball, Michael L. Miller

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

In 1974 Major League Baseball implemented the use of Final Offer Arbitration (FOA) to settle contract disputes for those players who were not yet eligible for free agency. Final Offer Arbitration was chosen because of its design to have parties reach settlement before the actual arbitration hearing. The purpose of this research is to evaluate if this system is the best method for settling contract disputes by analyzing whether Major League Baseball and its Players Association are using the system correctly, whether the system is fair and consistent, whether FOA has an effect on player performance, and also whether there …

The Four Musketeers Of Arbitral Duty (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 includefour 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 any …

Arbitration In Autumn, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

Often invoked as a metaphor for decline and decay, autumn also carries a sense of robust maturity bringing fruitful harvest and new beginnings. The season’s double symbolism evokes rival visions of arbitration today. Some observers see a golden age of cheap and cheerful proceedings as replaced by a costly complexity that fails arbitration’s promise of coherent and efficient dispute resolution. On closer scrutiny, however, arbitration reveals itself as having arrived at its autumn not in the sense of decay, but rather with vital maturity. Productive exchanges among the various stakeholders in the process serve to refine the counterpoise among accuracy, …

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 …

A Cautionary Tale On Arbitral Authority: Judges, Arbitrators And The Stolt-Nielsen Decision, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

Few matters prove as slippery as the allocation of tasks between judges and arbitrators in commercial disputes. A choice to arbitrate implicates waiver of access to otherwise competent courts in favor of adjudication which is both private and binding. Respect for this bargain means that judges should not normally disturb an arbitrator’s substantive conclusions.

East Asia’S Engagement With Cosmopolitan Ideals Under Its Trade Treaty Dispute Provisions, Chin Leng Lim

Chin Leng Lim

An East Asian view about how trade dispute settlement systems should be designed is slowly emerging. This paper argues that democratically-inspired trade law scholarship and cultural explanations of the international law behaviour of the Southeast and Northeast Asian trading nations have failed to capture or prescribe the actual treaty behaviour of these nations. Instead, such behaviour has resulted in the emergence of two different treaty models for the peaceful settlement of trade disputes. This article traces the practices of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), together with that of China, Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. We find two …

A Economia Da Arbitragem, Bruno Meyerhof Salama

Bruno Meyerhof Salama