Law Commons^™

The Flight From Arbitration: An Empirical Study Of Ex Ante Arbitration Clauses In Publicly-Held Companies’ Contracts, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey Miller

ExpressO

We study a data set of 2,858 contracts contained as exhibits in Form 8-K filings by reporting corporations over a six month period in 2002 for twelve types of contracts and a seven month period in 2002 for merger contracts. Because 8-K filings are required only for material events, these contracts likely are carefully negotiated by sophisticated parties who are well-informed about the contract terms. These contracts, therefore, provide evidence of efficient ex ante solutions to contracting problems. The vast majority of contracts did not require arbitration. Only about 11 percent of the contracts included binding arbitration clauses. The rate …

Shaffer's Footnote 36, Arístides Díaz-Perosa

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

New Judicial Hostility To Arbitration: Federal Preemption, Contract Unconscionability, And Agreements To Arbitrate, The, Steven J. Burton

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Part I of this Article sketches the basics of arbitration law and practice, and traces the development of the federal policy favoring arbitration, to establish a basis for evaluating contemporary judicial decisions. Part II examines the justification for the policy favoring arbitration and the reasons contracting parties may prefer arbitration. Part III evaluates the reasons courts give for finding arbitration agreements in employment and consumer contexts unconscionable, and therefore, unenforceable. The conclusion is that many courts make many clearly erroneous decisions, including decisions that are unconstitutional because they are preempted.

Courts Have The Final Say: Does The Doctrine Of Manifest Disregard Promote Lawful Arbitral Awards Or Disguise Unlawful Judicial Review, Lindsay Biesterfeld

Journal of Dispute Resolution

In exchange for a speedy, economical dispute resolution process, parties that submit to binding arbitration assume the risk that an arbitrator might misapply the law. United States Supreme Court precedent and federal law favor agreements to arbitrate by limiting judicial review of arbitral awards and requiring courts to "rigorously enforce arbitration agreements." These judicial constraints support the arbitral goals of efficiency and finality by reducing the risk that arbitral awards will be vacated on appeal. To balance the risk that arbitrators may abuse this standard of review, courts have supplemented restricted judicial review with a doctrine that allows an arbitral …

No Do-Overs For Parties Who Agree To Limit Review Of An Arbitrator's Decision, Patrick Gill

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Under the FAA, review of arbitration awards is limited to specific circumstances. However, in many instances, these default rules can be modified by contractual provisions including increasing or decreasing the level of review of arbitration awards. Although a broader scope of review is contrary to the main purposes of arbitration, courts have held that a contractual provision expanding judicial review is permissible. Furthermore, in some limited circumstances, courts have held that a contractual limitation on judicial review is permitted by the FAA where the restriction is clearly manifested in the contract and the process will not become unfair as a …

The New Judicial Hostility To Arbitration: Unconscionability And Agreements To Arbitrate, Steven J. Burton

ExpressO

Many, many contract disputes are now being settled by arbitration instead of litigation. The United States Supreme Court strongly favors the enforcement of agreements to arbitrate that fall within the Federal Arbitration Act. This Article shows that many lower courts, however, are using the contract unconscionability doctrine to refuse enforcement of agreements to arbitrate. It argues (1) that many such lower court decisions should be pre-empted by the Federal Arbitration Act, and (2) that lower courts should give due weight to the federal policy favoring arbitration when deciding whether to enforce an agreement to arbitrate.

Final Offer Arbitration In The New Era Of Major League Baseball, Spencer B. Gordon

ExpressO

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the economic, athletic, and social impact of final offer salary arbitration in Major League Baseball (“MLB”). The article delves into the motivations, fluctuations, and evolution of the player-owner relationship and free agency. The commentary then focuses on the distinguishing features and intricacies of final offer arbitration. Although salary arbitration in the context of Major League Baseball is a topic oft discussed in the law review setting, the analysis rarely reaches the level exhibited in this article. Moreover, most articles on the subject were written between 1996 and 2000 when the 1994 players’ strike …

Circumventing The Supremacy Clause? Understanding The Constitutional Implications Of The United States' Treatment Of Treaty Obligations Through An Analysis Of The New York Convention, Amber A. Ward

San Diego International Law Journal

The United States participation in treaties and other international agreements is becoming more necessary and an increasingly prevalent occurrence as a result of globalization. The rapid pace of technological innovation and more effective means of transportation have caused our world to shrink, making countries even more interconnected. The corresponding explosion of international business and commercial transactions has resulted in high levels of risk and uncertainty due to a complex mix of laws, monetary factors, politics and cultures that vary across countries. For global players, it has become essential to have international agreements that can mitigate the risks inherent in international …

Reforming Udrp Arbitration: The Suggestions To Eliminate Potential Inefficiency, Soohye Cho

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

Even though the Internet has become an integral part of daily life, resolving legal disputes via Internet still remains in the development stage. The legal framework for regulating such Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) has not been established since the Virtual Magistrate Project offered the early ODR program began in 1995. Still, resolving disputes through Internet has been increasing dramatically, especially in the area of Domain Name Disputes. After the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) adopted the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) in 1999 , this procedure has been regarded as the most successful ODR to …

Arbitration Costs And Contingent Fee Contracts, Christopher R. Drahozal

Vanderbilt Law Review

A common criticism of arbitration is that its upfront costs (arbitrators' fees and administrative costs) may preclude consumers and employees from asserting their claims. Some commentators have argued further that arbitration costs undercut the benefits to consumers and employees of contingent fee contracts, which permit the claimants to defer payment of attorneys' fees and litigation expenses until they prevail in the case (and if they do not prevail, avoid such costs altogether). This paper argues that this criticism has it exactly backwards. Rather than arbitration costs interfering with the workings of contingent fee contracts, the contingent fee mechanism provides a …

Confidentiality In Arbitration: Beyond The Myth, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

Many people assume that arbitration is private and confidential. But is that assumption accurate? This article is the first to explore that question in the important context of whether arbitration communications can be discovered and admitted into evidence in other legal proceedings - a question that is just beginning to show up in the cases. It first surveys the federal and state statutory and case law, finding that arbitration communications in fact are generally discoverable and admissible. It then considers the normative desirability of discovering and admitting arbitration communications evidence, concluding that the free discovery and admissibility of arbitration communications …

The Effect Of Forum Selection Clauses On A District Court's Power To Compel Arbitration, Thomas V. Burch

Thomas V. Burch

No abstract provided.

Transparency In International Commercial Arbitration, Catherine A. Rogers

Journal Articles

Scholars have long been making the case for expanding transparency in the international commercial arbitration system, but recently these proposals have taken on a greater sense of urgency and an apparent willingness to forcibly impose transparency reforms on unwilling parties. These new transparency advocates exhort the general public's stakehold in many issues being arbitrated, which they contend necessitates transparency reforms, including compulsory publication of international commercial arbitration awards.

In this symposium essay, I begin by developing a definition of transparency in the adjucatory setting, and conceptually distinguishing from other concepts, like "public access" and "disclosure," which are often improperly treated …

The Explained Award Of Damocles: Protection Or Peril In Securities Arbitration, Jill I. Gross

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

NASD's proposed rule change requiring arbitrators to provide written explanations in arbitration awards upon the customers' request (the “explained award proposal”), which was published for public comment in July 2005, is the clearest example of NASD's proposing a rule change in response to investors' complaints. “We have found that investors want to know more about how a panel reaches its decision,” stated NASD Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Robert R. Glauber in announcing the explained award proposal. “By giving investors the option of requiring a written explanation of an arbitration panel's decision, we will increase investor confidence in the fairness …

Designer Trials, Elizabeth G. Thornburg

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article considers the intersection of freedom of contract and the trials that have not vanished. Could contracting parties effectively agree in advance of a dispute that any litigation of the case will comply with certain rules? Would such an agreement be enforced even in a contract of adhesion? If so, parties with sufficient bargaining leverage could design away many of the characteristics of litigation that they find unappealing, without the need to resort to private processes. The result: a designer trial with the procedural deck stacked in favor of the party with the greatest pre-dispute bargaining power.

Such a …

The Contractarian Model Of Arbitration And Its Implications For Judicial Review Of Arbitral Awards, Paul F. Kirgis

Faculty Law Review Articles

Those who favor the current system of virtually unlimited and unreviewable arbitration can forestall change—and even avoid engaging in a sustained policy discussion—by falling back on those defenses. While it is not possible to resolve the policy issues finally, it is possible to assess whether the principle of party autonomy, coupled with applicable legal doctrine, justifies the degree of deference courts have adopted. That is what I attempt in this Article. I argue that, at least in certain classes of cases, the principle of party autonomy requires greater judicial scrutiny of arbitral awards. I argue further that this result is …

The Effect Of Forum Selection Clauses On District Courts’ Authority To Compel Arbitration, Thomas V. Burch, John W. Hinchey

Scholarly Works

This is a short piece written for the AAA's Dispute Resolution Journal on two competing provisions in Section 4 of the FAA. One provision tells district courts to compel arbitration in accordance with the parties' agreement, including any forum selection clause. The other says that the court can compel arbitration only within its own territory. This, of course, creates a problem when the forum selection clause calls for arbitration in another jurisdiction. This short article addresses the conflict, showing how courts tend to rule on the issue (as of 2006).

How Far Is Too Far: Reexamining The Continuing Extension Of Arbitral Immunity To Arbitral Organizations, Elizabeth Wilhelmi

Journal of Dispute Resolution

The protection of arbitration proceedings from judicial inquiry is restricted not only by the limited grounds for vacatur, but also by the application of arbitral immunity, a protection derived from the judicial immunity applied to judges. This immunity strengthens the finality of arbitration by restricting judicial review of decisions protected by arbitral immunity, but at the same time, it raises the question of whether courts should give arbitration the same broad immunity that protects judges. Despite the differences between arbitration and the judicial system, the courts have applied arbitral immunity to the arbitrator's acts in the same way as they …

Origin, Scope, And Irrevocability Of The Manifest Disregard Of The Law Doctrine: Second Circuit Views, Christian Turner, Joshua Ratner

Scholarly Works

After arbitration has occurred, parties may seek judicial enforcement of the arbitral award, converting the private determination into an enforceable judgment. Parties that did not prevail in the arbitration may, at the same time, seek to have the arbitral award vacated. This article concerns the doctrine that permits courts to vacate an arbitral award when the arbitrators “manifestly disregarded” the law, focusing on recent developments in the Second Circuit. Despite the exceedingly deferential scope of this doctrine, the Second Circuit has actually vacated a handful of arbitrations on grounds of manifest disregard, and the doctrine is routinely raised by litigants. …

Untangling The Privacy Paradox In Arbitration, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

Arbitration is private but not secret. This truism regarding arbitration seems contradictory and nonsensical. However, common understandings of privacy in arbitration often lull individuals into assuming personal information revealed in arbitration may not become public. They assume privacy and confidentiality are synonymous. The reality is that arbitration is private but not necessarily confidential, or secret. This is the privacy paradox: it defies common conceptions of arbitration's secrecy, but is nonetheless true. This paradox is problematic because it leads to shortsighted contracting and simplistic assumptions about arbitral justice. Moreover, it may foster injustice when repeat players unduly benefit from unpublished awards …

Teaching Adr In The Labor Field In China, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

My first visit to China, in 1994, was purely as a tourist, and came about almost by accident. In late September of that year I attended the XIV World Congress of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security in Seoul, South Korea. In the second week of October I was scheduled to begin teaching a one-term course in American law as a visiting professor at Cambridge University in England. Despite my hazy notions of geography, I realized it made no sense to return to the United States for the intervening week. The obvious solution was to continue flying …