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A More Complete Look At Complexity, Jeffrey W. Stempel
A More Complete Look At Complexity, Jeffrey W. Stempel
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The ability of courts to successfully resolve complex cases has been a matter of contentious debate, not only for the last quarter-century, but for most of the twentieth century. This debate has been part of the legal landscape at least since Judge Jerome Frank's polemic book from which this Symposium derives its title, and probably since Roscoe Pound's famous address to the American Bar Association. During the 1980s and 1990s in particular, the battlelines of the pro-and anti-court debate have been brightly drawn. Some commentators, most reliably successful plaintiffs' counsel and politically liberal academics, defend the judicial track record in …
Mandatory Pre-Dispute Arbitration: Steps Need To Be Taken To Prevent Unfairness To Employees And Consumers, Jean R. Sternlight
Mandatory Pre-Dispute Arbitration: Steps Need To Be Taken To Prevent Unfairness To Employees And Consumers, Jean R. Sternlight
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Courts, arbitral organizations and governmental agencies are increasingly recognizing that mandatory binding arbitration can be used both to disadvantage employees and consumers, and to evade legal requirements. Over the last decade, private parties such as employers, manufacturers and financial organizations began using binding arbitration agreements to skirt the public law, and public juries, with increasing intensity. As so often happens, overreaching may once again be giving way to retrenchment, as the tide seems to be turning away from the “anything goes” approach of the earlier 1990s.
Forum Shopping For Arbitration Decisions: Federal Courts' Use Of Antisuit Injunctions Against State Courts, Jean R. Sternlight
Forum Shopping For Arbitration Decisions: Federal Courts' Use Of Antisuit Injunctions Against State Courts, Jean R. Sternlight
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Arbitration clauses, which are supposed to do away with litigation, have ironically spawned many complicated and expensive court fights. Some of the most complex cases involve both forum shopping by the parties and jurisdictional turf battles between federal and state courts. Federal courts have, on quite a few occasions, actually gone so far as to enjoin a state court from continuing to consider a pending case because the federal court concluded that the matter ought to be arbitrated. The Supreme Court, however, has never ruled on whether or when such "arbitral antisuit injunctions" are permissible. In Moses H. Cone Memorial …
Gateway Widens Doorway To Imposing Unfair Binding Arbitration On Consumers, Jean R. Sternlight
Gateway Widens Doorway To Imposing Unfair Binding Arbitration On Consumers, Jean R. Sternlight
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Hill v. Gateway, is but the most extreme example of a series of court decisions that allow large companies to impose potentially unfair binding arbitration agreements on unwitting consumers. The outcome in Gateway, however, is questionable on federal statutory, common law, and constitutional grounds.
Rethinking The Constitutionality Of The Supreme Court's Preference For Binding Arbitration: A Fresh Assessment Of Jury Trial, Separation Of Powers, And Due Process Concerns, Jean R. Sternlight
Rethinking The Constitutionality Of The Supreme Court's Preference For Binding Arbitration: A Fresh Assessment Of Jury Trial, Separation Of Powers, And Due Process Concerns, Jean R. Sternlight
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Courts and commentators have typically assumed that binding arbitration is both private and consensual, and that it therefore raises no constitutional concerns. This Article challenges both assumptions and goes on to consider arguments that arbitration agreements may unconstitutionally deprive persons of their right to a jury trial, to a judge, and to due process of law. The author argues first that courts' interpretation of seemingly private arbitration agreements may often give rise to "state action," particularly where courts have used a "preference favoring arbitration over litigation" to construe a contract in a non-neutral fashion. The author next draws on the …
Beyond Formalism And False Dichotomies: The Need For Institutionalizing A Flexible Concept Of The Mediator's Role, Jeffrey W. Stempel
Beyond Formalism And False Dichotomies: The Need For Institutionalizing A Flexible Concept Of The Mediator's Role, Jeffrey W. Stempel
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Related to the problem of the false dichotomy is the formalist application of the either/or construct. If, for example, one adopts as a first premise the view that mediation is by definition non-evaluative, and then rigidly applies this premise to issues of appropriate mediator behavior, the result is a formalist system that permits mediators little or no leeway to depart from the non-evaluative style. This sort of regulatory regimen may satisfy the non-evaluative ethos of some mediation scholars, but it does so at the risk of becoming a rigid system that prevents mediators from taking practical actions most appropriate to …
Bootstrapping And Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Arbitral Infatuation And The Decline Of Consent, Jeffrey W. Stempel
Bootstrapping And Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Arbitral Infatuation And The Decline Of Consent, Jeffrey W. Stempel
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The Seventh Amendment to the Constitution preserves for litigants a right to a jury trial in actions at law. The right to a jury trial does not attach for equitable actions, but in cases presenting claims for both legal and equitable relief a right to a jury trial exists for common questions of fact. Although many modern statutes and claims did not exist in 1791, the Amendment has been interpreted to require a jury trial of statutory claims seeking monetary damages, the classic form of legal relief, so long as there is a relatively apt analogy between the modern statutory …
Reflections Of Judicial Adr And The Multi-Door Courthouse At Twenty: Fait Accompli, Failed Overture, Or Fledgling Adulthood, Jeffrey W. Stempel
Reflections Of Judicial Adr And The Multi-Door Courthouse At Twenty: Fait Accompli, Failed Overture, Or Fledgling Adulthood, Jeffrey W. Stempel
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Like any trend, ADR has its skeptics and even some opponents. Considerable debate exists regarding the degree to which the increasing ADRization of traditionally judicial activity amounts to triumph or tragedy, a point well-illustrated by the past Schwartz Lectures. In the 1993 Schwartz Lecture, Professor Laura Nader described the ADR movement as a byproduct of society's attempt to suppress or conceal uncomfortable conflicts. In the 1994 Lecture, Professor Judith Resnik essentially concluded that the modern ADR movement has brought a regrettable de facto closing of the court house (or at least raised barriers to entry) and replaced reflective decision-making about …
Panacea Or Corporate Tool?: Debunking The Supreme Court's Preference For Binding Arbitration, Jean R. Sternlight
Panacea Or Corporate Tool?: Debunking The Supreme Court's Preference For Binding Arbitration, Jean R. Sternlight
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This article examines the increasing use of contracts of adhesion in which companies require consumers, employees, franchisees and other "little guys" to submit disputes with the company to binding arbitration. The article argues that the Supreme Court's current preference for such agreements is not statutorily well-founded. Specifically, it contends that the Federal Arbitration Act was not intended to make such agreements binding on unknowing consumers or employees. Turning next to policy analysis, the article asserts that the Supreme Court has erred in expressing a preference for binding arbitration in cases where such arbitration was not knowingly and voluntarily accepted by …
New Paradigm, Normal Science, Or Crumbling Construct? Trends In Adjudicatory Procedure And Litigation Reform, Jeffrey W. Stempel
New Paradigm, Normal Science, Or Crumbling Construct? Trends In Adjudicatory Procedure And Litigation Reform, Jeffrey W. Stempel
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One aspect of a possible new era is the increasing ad hoc activity of various interest groups, including the bench and the organized bar, primarily pursued through official organizations such as the Judicial Conference, the Federal Judicial Center, the American Bar Association (“ABA”), and the American Law Institute. Traditionally, of course, judges and lawyers have lobbied Congress and state legislatures for litigation change, as demonstrated by the saga of the Rules Enabling Act (“Enabling Act” or “Act”). But, the legal profession's more recent “political” activity regarding litigation reform differs from the traditional model in several ways. First, the participation of …
A Better Approach To Arbitrability, Jeffrey W. Stempel
A Better Approach To Arbitrability, Jeffrey W. Stempel
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Historically, Anglo-American courts refused to enforce arbitration agreements, jealously guarding their dispute resolution monopoly. During the early twentieth century, merchants and attorneys began seeking legislation requiring courts to defer to arbitration. The United States Abitration Act took effect January 1, 1926 and has remained essentially unchanged. It was written with the implicit assumption that it would be invoked by commercial actors having relatively equal bargaining power and emotive appeal to a jury. The Act says nothing to direct the court's inquiry concerning the quality of either party's assent to the arbitration clause other than requiring a written arbitration agreement and …
Reconsidering The Employment Contract Exclusion In Section 1 Of The Federal Arbitration Act: Correcting The Judiciary's Failure Of Statutory Vision, Jeffrey W. Stempel
Reconsidering The Employment Contract Exclusion In Section 1 Of The Federal Arbitration Act: Correcting The Judiciary's Failure Of Statutory Vision, Jeffrey W. Stempel
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The Federal Arbitration Act (the Act), seeks to eliminate centuries of perceived judicial hostility toward arbitration agreements. The Act made written arbitration agreements involving interstate commerce specifically enforceable. It also provided a procedural structure for enforcing awards, which were protected through deferential judicial review. The Act intended to have a wide reach, employing a broad definition of commerce that has presumably grown in breadth along with the expansion of judicial notions of commerce. Although courts applied the Act in tentative and cautious fashion until the 1960's, arbitration gained momentum during the 1970's and the 1980's. Despite growing judicial enthusiasm for …
Pitfalls Of Public Policy: The Case Of Arbitration Agreements, Jeffrey W. Stempel
Pitfalls Of Public Policy: The Case Of Arbitration Agreements, Jeffrey W. Stempel
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As the juxtaposition of these quotations suggests, judges have long held disparate views on the legitimacy and value of “public policy” considerations as a basis for legal decision making. The popular notion posits that Justice Holmes and legal realists carried the day, making public policy analysis an ordinary part of the adjudication process. The story, of course, is more complex than this legal version of Don Quixote. Many judges and lawyers, including Justice Holmes in other writings, continued to speak of adjudication in more formalist and positivist terms, with most laypersons in apparent agreement. Judge Burroughs' view of public policy …