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When Procedure Moonlights As Reason, There Is Nothing Left To Abuse, Matthew E. Terry

Journal of Dispute Resolution

In Greenstreet v. Social Security Administration, when the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals could not discern exactly what basis upon which an arbitrator acted, it leapt past any presumption in favor of the arbitrator's discretion and found that what an arbitrator did not do was an abuse of his decision-making volition, just as an act beyond his prescriptive powers would have been an abuse of discretion. So, in attempting to weed out the arbitrariness in the arbitration processes that decide workplace punishments, the court heaped needless and unreasoned process squarely into the arbitrator's path, thereby greatly lessening the amount of …