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Articles 1 - 13 of 13
Full-Text Articles in Law
Public Injunctions As A Way Around Concepcion: California's Continued Resistance To The Federal Arbitration Act, Elizabeth Kiesewetter
Public Injunctions As A Way Around Concepcion: California's Continued Resistance To The Federal Arbitration Act, Elizabeth Kiesewetter
Journal of Dispute Resolution
This note outlines the general applicability of the FAA and preemption. Next, it examines the Supreme Court's precedent concerning preemption, as it relates to class actions and public policy. This note argues that California's public injunction exception does prohibit outright the arbitration of a particular type of claim and is, thus, preempted by the FAA. The Supreme Court will likely see this rule as being at odds with the FAA and as another repudiation from the California courts of their long-standing FAA jurisprudence. Finally, this note argues that, despite the likely preemption of California's rule, there are strong policy arguments …
Beyond The Self-Execution Analysis: Rationalizing Constitutional, Treaty And Statutory Interpretation In International Commercial Arbitration, S. I. Strong
Faculty Publications
International commercial arbitration has long been considered one of the paradigmatic forms of private international law and has achieved a degree of legitimacy that is virtually unparalleled in the international realm. However, significant questions have recently begun to arise about the device’s public international attributes, stemming largely from a circuit split regarding the nature of the New York Convention, the leading treaty in the field, and Chapter 2 of the Federal Arbitration Act, which helps give effect to the Convention in the United States. Efforts have been made to place the debate about the New York Convention within the context …
What Constitutes An "Agreement In Writing" In International Commercial Arbitration? Conflicts Between The New York Convention And The Federal Arbitration Act, S. I. Strong
Faculty Publications
This article investigates whether and to what extent a party must produce an “agreement in writing” when seeking to enforce an international arbitration agreement or award in a U.S. federal court. This issue has recently given rise to both a circuit split and a petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, and involves matters of formal validity as well as federal subject matter jurisdiction. The problem arises out of subtle differences in the way an “agreement in writing” is defined in the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) and the 1958 United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign …
Arbitration Ambush In A Policy Polemic, Amy J. Schmitz
Arbitration Ambush In A Policy Polemic, Amy J. Schmitz
Faculty Publications
Arbitration has been demonized in the media and consumer protection debates, often without empirical support or consideration of its attributes. This has led to renewed efforts to pass the Arbitration Fairness Action, which would bar enforcement of pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer, employment, and civil rights contexts. It also inspired Dodd-Frank’s preclusion of arbitration clauses in mortgage contracts, along with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s charge to prohibit or limit enforcement of pre-dispute arbitration agreements in consumer financial products and services contracts. Some of this negativity toward arbitration is warranted, especially in the wake of the United Supreme Court’s recent …
Obituary For The Federal Arbitration Act: An Older Cousin To Modern Civil Procedure, An, Imre S. Szalai
Obituary For The Federal Arbitration Act: An Older Cousin To Modern Civil Procedure, An, Imre S. Szalai
Journal of Dispute Resolution
In order to explore the different ways in which the FAA is related to the development of modern civil procedure, this article is divided into four main parts. first, this article discusses how the FAA is related to the Judiciary Act of 1925. Second, this article focuses on the FAA's relationship to the enactment of the Rules Enabling Act and the related adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Third, this article discusses how the Supreme Court's transformation of the doctrine of personal jurisdiction in International Shoe is related to the enactment of the FAA. Fourth, this article discusses …
Pizza-Box Contracts: True Tales Of Consumer Contracting Culture, Amy J. Schmitz
Pizza-Box Contracts: True Tales Of Consumer Contracting Culture, Amy J. Schmitz
Faculty Publications
Do you ask for contract or purchase terms prior to completing your everyday purchases? Do you first read the pizza box before paying the pizza delivery guy or gal? Typical consumers do not ask for or read their contracts prepurchase, and companies have become accustomed to burying purchase terms in product packaging or Internet links. These postpurchase, rolling, or “pizza-box” contracts have therefore become the norm in the consumer marketplace, and courts generally enforce them as legitimate contracts. This Article discusses varying theoretical perspectives on enforcement of these pizza-box contracts, and explores the available empirical data bearing on the legitimacy …
Third Circuit Buyers Beware: District Court In Litman Holds Unconscionability Defense Contravened By Federal Arbitration Act, David C. Winters
Third Circuit Buyers Beware: District Court In Litman Holds Unconscionability Defense Contravened By Federal Arbitration Act, David C. Winters
Journal of Dispute Resolution
Without even knowing it, just about everyone has agreed to settle disputes through arbitration and has waived any rights to proceed on a class-wide basis. While many consumers do not read the fine print in the agreements they sign, a variety of companies, from cell phone providers to car dealers, have consumers agree in sales contracts to arbitrate any claims and to waive the ability to proceed with a class action claim. This was the scenario in the case of Litman v. Cellco Partnership, in which a New Jersey federal district court held that the plaintiff cell phone customers could …
Consistent With Inconsistency: The Sixth Circuit Keeps Manifest Disregard After Hall Street, John C. Steffens
Consistent With Inconsistency: The Sixth Circuit Keeps Manifest Disregard After Hall Street, John C. Steffens
Journal of Dispute Resolution
For over half a century, courts have used the doctrine of manifest disregard as a ground for vacating arbitration awards. However, the Supreme Court's ruling in Hall Street Associates. v. Mattel raised questions among lower courts regarding the viability of the doctrine after the Hall Street decision. Today, many lower courts differ in their application of the doctrine. Some courts claim that the Hall Street decision has ended the viability of manifest disregard. Others claim that the doctrine lives on as an interpretation of section 10 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA),5 despite the Supreme Court's ruling in Hall Street.
Consideration Of 'Contracting Culture' In Enforcing Arbitration Provisions, Amy J. Schmitz
Consideration Of 'Contracting Culture' In Enforcing Arbitration Provisions, Amy J. Schmitz
Faculty Publications
The Federal Arbitration Act mandates strict and uniform enforcement of standardized pre-dispute arbitration provisions. This may not be proper, however, in light of the importance of context with respect to these provisions. This Article therefore seeks to remind courts of the importance of exchange context by proposing a "contracting culture" continuum for enforcing these arbitration provisions that acknowledges the impacts of these provisions in a particular communal context. "Contracting culture" encompasses economic and non-economic relational factors that impact dispute resolution agreements, but go beyond common conceptions of "culture" focused on ethnicity, nationality, or religion. It also explores beyond the primary …
Dangers Of Deference To Form Arbitration Provisions, Amy J. Schmitz
Dangers Of Deference To Form Arbitration Provisions, Amy J. Schmitz
Faculty Publications
This Article is part of my larger project exploring what I call "contracting culture," which borrows from legal realism and relational contract theory by considering contextual factors such as negotiators' relations, understandings, and values. As part of this project, I am pursuing various threads, including empirical studies of how contracting realities impact arbitration. In this Article, however, I focus on how these realities in business to consumer contracts combine with the Federal Arbitration Act and formulaic contract law to foster dangerous deference to form arbitration provisions. The Article then invites procedural reforms and offers suggestions for regulations aimed to temper …
Faa Preemption By Choice-Of-Law Provisions: Enforceable Or Unenforceable, Ross Ball
Faa Preemption By Choice-Of-Law Provisions: Enforceable Or Unenforceable, Ross Ball
Journal of Dispute Resolution
Generally, choice-of-law provisions allow corporations that do business in several states or countries to draft their agreements and conduct their business in accordance with the law they choose. When the choice-of-law provision is contained in a contract that does not have an agreement to arbitrate, courts generally have no qualms about enforcing them. However, when the contract does contain an agreement to arbitrate, courts are reluctant to enforce the choice-of-law provision as to the arbitration agreement because the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) governs arbitration agreements. This issue has been the source of much confusion and litigation in the field of …
Refreshing Contractual Analysis Of Adr Agreements By Curing Bipolar Avoidance Of Modern Common Law, Amy J. Schmitz
Refreshing Contractual Analysis Of Adr Agreements By Curing Bipolar Avoidance Of Modern Common Law, Amy J. Schmitz
Faculty Publications
Law governing enforcement of ADR agreement not governed by the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) has been uncertain, and often aimless. This Article therefore calls for clarification of this law, through development of a modern contractual approach for enforcing these non-FAA ADR procedures. Although courts may look to the FAA as a resource for evaluating and developing an enforcement approach, they also should employ modern contract and remedy tools that are more adaptive than the Act's summary enforcement because it allow courts to consider contextual, relational, and equitable factors when determining application of specific enforcement remedies. This allows courts to apply …
Ending A Mud Bowl: Defining Arbitration’S Finality Through Functional Analysis, Amy J. Schmitz
Ending A Mud Bowl: Defining Arbitration’S Finality Through Functional Analysis, Amy J. Schmitz
Faculty Publications
The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) and Uniform Arbitration Act (UAA), on the state level, prescribe a nearly identical procedural and remedial scheme for promoting independent, self-contained arbitration. To that end, both acts curtail courts' review of arbitration awards, by limiting the grounds for vacating awards to those aimed at ensuring only basic procedural fairness. Nonetheless, seemingly "pro-arbitration" impulses have driven some courts' eager application, or misapplication, of the FAA/UAA statutory scheme to enforce dispute resolution agreements that reject the acts' limited review prescriptions. This Article tackles this arguable abuse of the FAA/UAA scheme, by proposing a functional analysis for defining …