Law Commons^™

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 …

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 …

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).

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 …