Law Commons^™

Construction Law, D. Stan Barnhill

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bits, Ippas, Trips And Icsid: Justice For Some, Alphabet Soup For All, Christopher Wadlow

Christopher Wadlow

Examines the possibility that ICSID (the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes) might be a more favourable forum than the WTO for private party complaints of violations of the TRIPs Agreement, if the state conduct alleged to violate TRIPs amounted to expropriation or breach of the principle of fair and equitable treatment.

Crowning The New King: The Statutory Arbitrator And The Demise Of Judicial Review, Michael H. Leroy

Michael H LeRoy

Judicial review of arbitration awards is highly deferential, but when does it become rubber stamping? Using original data, I find that federal courts vacated only 4.3 percent of 162 disputed awards. Nearly the same result was observed for a sub-sample of 44 employment discrimination awards under Title VII. By comparison, federal appeals courts in 2006 reversed 12.9 percent of 5,917 rulings made by civil court judges on the merits of legal claims.

Why are the rulings of Article III judges scrutinized more than the awards of citizen-arbitrators? What does this mean when companies can avoid Article III court rulings by …

The Tower Of Bazzle: Why Due Process Requires A Hybrid Model Of Classwide Arbitration, Zachary Allen

Zachary Allen

During the late 1970s the United States witnessed the beginning of an uncomfortable courtship between two powerful dispute resolution mechanisms: arbitration and the class action. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its approval of their marriage, referred to as classwide arbitration, in Green Tree Financial Corporation v. Bazzle. In Bazzle, the Court held that where an arbitration agreement is silent regarding classwide arbitration, the arbitrator—not the court—should interpret the agreement to determine whether it permits classwide arbitration.

Unfortunately, the Court’s blessing was mixed. Bazzle is on infirm ground for two reasons. First, the Court could only muster a 4-1-4 …

Enforcing Class Arbitration In The International Sphere: Due Process And Public Policy Concerns, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

This article appears to be the first to address the unique issues relating to international class arbitration and to discuss the status of class arbitration in other countries. To date, the only published articles on class arbitration - a dispute resolution mechanism that has been in existence in the United States since the early 1980s - have focused on domestic arbitration. However, with a number of known international class arbitrations in progress, all seated in the United States, questions concerning the transnational legitimacy of the class arbitration process and the ability to enforce class awards under the New York Convention …

Embracing Unconscionability’S Safety Net Function, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

Despite courts' and commentators' denial of morality and focus on efficiency in contract law, fairness and flexibility have remained the bedrocks of the unconscionability doctrine. This Article therefore departs from the popular formalist critiques of unconscionability that urge for the doctrine's demise or constraint based on claims that its flexibility and lack of clear definition threaten efficiency in contract law. Contrary to this formalist trend, this Article proposes that unconscionability is necessarily flexible and contextual in order to serve its historical and philosophical function of protecting core human values. Unconscionability is not frivolous gloss on classical contract law. Instead, it …

Natura Contrattuale O Processuale Dell'arbitrato Irrituale?, Valerio Sangiovanni

Valerio Sangiovanni

No abstract provided.

Curing Consumer Warranty Woes Through Regulated Arbitration, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

This article proposes legislative procedural reforms accounting for the realities of consumer arbitration that have threatened and denied consumers' access to remedies for companies' violations of public, or statutory, warranty remedies under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (MMWA). Furthermore, the Article proposes to clarify and expand the MMWA's current dispute resolution template in order to resolve judicial disagreement regarding the template's application and foster beneficial use of finding arbitration. Accordingly, this is not a call to ban all pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer contracts, but is instead an invitation for more politically palatable reforms that preserve both companies' savings and consumers' …

State Consent, Investor Interests And The Future Of Investment Arbitration: Reanalyzing The Jurisdiction Of Investor-State Tribunals In Hard Cases, Paul M. Blyschak

Paul M Blyschak

While the international investment regime has enjoyed an extended period of enthusiastic subscription, this euphoria has begun to recede in some quarters. Although sovereign consent to waive immunity is at the heart of investor-State arbitration, many states feel that this consent has been illegitimately expanded. In this regard, this thesis examines the degree to which the interpretive approach taken to state consent to arbitration can affect whether an investment tribunal will assert jurisdiction over an investment dispute. Investor-State tribunals often confront ‘hard cases’ where their authority to decide a dispute is vigorously contested by respondent host states. This thesis examines …

State Consent, Investor Interests And The Future Of Investment Arbitration: Reanalyzing The Jurisdiction Of Investor-State Tribunals In Hard Cases, Paul M. Blyschak

Paul M Blyschak

While the international investment regime has enjoyed an extended period of enthusiastic subscription, this euphoria has begun to recede in some quarters. Although sovereign consent to waive immunity is at the heart of investor-State arbitration, many states feel that this consent has been illegitimately expanded. In this regard, this thesis examines the degree to which the interpretive approach taken to state consent to arbitration can affect whether an investment tribunal will assert jurisdiction over an investment dispute. Investor-State tribunals often confront ‘hard cases’ where their authority to decide a dispute is vigorously contested by respondent host states. This thesis examines …

The Mediation Metamodel: Understanding Practice, Nadja Alexander

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The mediation metamodel provides a systematic framework for understanding mediation as it is practiced in a variety of professional and cultural contexts. Six mediation practices are introduced within the framework of the metamodel: settlement mediation, facilitative mediation, transformative mediation, expert advisory mediation, wise counsel mediation, and tradition-based mediation. The relationships of these different practices to one another are explored and the assumptions underlying them are examined with reference to the literature. The metamodel provides orientation in the dispute resolution field not only for mediators, parties, and their lawyers, but also for regulators, referring bodies, researchers, and students of mediation.

Should Parties’ Disclosure Requirements For Arbitrators Be Honored By Courts: Positivesoftware Solutions, Inc. V. New Century Mortgage Corporation, Leonard E. Gross, Howard L. Wieder

Leonard E. Gross

In this article, we criticize the decision of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in PositiveSoftware Solutions, Inc. v. New Century Mortgage Corporation. In PositiveSoftware, the court confirmed an arbitration award even though the arbitrator had failed to disclose rather significant facts about his relationship to one of the parties. Our thesis is that courts should enforce the arbitrator disclosure requirements to which the parties have agreed by not confirming arbitration awards when arbitrators fail to comply with those disclosure requirements. In adopting the Federal Arbitration Act, Congress intended to encourage the use of arbitration. The net effect of refusing …

Why Arbitrate? The Questionable Quest For Efficiency In Hallstreet Street Associates, Llc V. Mattel, Inc., 550 U.S. __ (2008), David K. Kessler

David K Kessler

The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) makes arbitration agreements between private parties legally enforceable. The policy favoring arbitration underlying the FAA has been justified as serving two ends: it protects freedom of contract, and it creates an efficient alternative dispute resolution system. Previous decisions by the Court have indicated a belief that, when those two goals come into conflict, the result that preserves freedom of contract should prevail. In Hallstreet Associates, L.L.C. v. Mattel, Inc., however, a recent case involving the Federal Arbitration Act, the Court's decision preserved perceived efficiency at the expense of freedom of contract. The Court held that …

From Court-Surrogate To Regulatory Tool: Re-Framing The Empirical Study Of Employment Arbitration, W. Mark C. Weidemaier

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A growing body of empirical research explores the use of arbitration to resolve employment disputes, typically by comparing arbitration to litigation using relatively traditional outcome measures: who wins, how much, and how quickly. On the whole, this research suggests that employees fare reasonably well in arbitration. Yet there remain sizeable gaps in our knowledge. This Article explores these gaps with two goals in mind. The first and narrower goal is to explain why it remains exceedingly difficult to assess the relative fairness of arbitration and litigation. The outcome research does not account for a variety of 'filtering" mechanisms that influence …

Arbitration Costs And Forum Accessibility: Empirical Evidence, Christopher R. Drahozal

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, written for this symposium issue on "Empirical Studies of Mandatory Arbitration," I examine the available empirical evidence on these two questions. I take "mandatory arbitration" to refer to pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer and employment (and maybe franchise) contracts. Accordingly, I limit my consideration of the empirical evidence to those types of contracts. I do not discuss empirical studies of international arbitrations, which almost always arise out of agreements between commercial entities. Nor do I discuss empirical studies of court-annexed arbitrations, which may not derive from party agreement and do not ordinarily proceed to a binding award.

Arbitration's Summer Soldiers: An Empirical Study Of Arbitration Clauses In Consumer And Nonconsumer Contracts, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller, Emily Sherwin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

We provide the first study of varying use of arbitration clauses across contracts within the same firms. Using a sample of 26 consumer contracts and 164 nonconsumer contracts from large public corporations, we compared the use of arbitration clauses in firms' consumer and nonconsumer contracts. Over three-quarters of the consumer agreements provided for mandatory arbitration but less than 10% of the firms' material nonconsumer, nonemployment contracts included arbitration clauses. The absence of arbitration provisions in the vast majority of material contracts suggests that, ex ante, many firms value, even prefer, litigation over arbitration to resolve disputes with peers. Our data …

Arbitration's Summer Soldiers: An Empirical Study Of Arbitration Clauses In Consumer And Nonconsumer Contracts, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

We provide the first study of varying use of arbitration clauses across contracts within the same firms. Using a sample of 26 consumer contracts and 164 nonconsumer contracts from large public corporations, we compared arbitration clause use in consumer contracts with their use in the same firms' nonconsumer contracts. Over three-quarters of the consumer agreements provided for mandatory arbitration but less than 10% of the firms' material nonconsumer, nonemployment contracts included arbitration clauses. The absence of arbitration provisions in nearly all material contracts suggests that, ex ante, many firms value, even prefer, litigation over arbitration to resolve disputes with peers. …

How Bad Are Mandatory Arbitration Terms?, Omri Ben-Shahar

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This symposium was presented in the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Contracts Section of the American Association of Law Schools. Indeed, studying the unconscionability of arbitration terms has become a standard feature of first-year contracts courses. This is perhaps one of the hotter topics in today's contract law and policy. Contractual rights, as they are enforced by contract law, might have substantially different values depending on the venue through which they can be vindicated. It is hard to predict how these values differ, but hopefully this symposium will inform some of these predictions.

Whither Arbitration?, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

Over the past several decades, scholars and policymakers have debated the future of arbitration in the United States. Those debates have taken on new significance in the present Congress, which is considering a variety of reform proposals. Among the most widely watched are ones that would prohibit the enforcement of predispute arbitration clauses in employment, consumer, and franchise contracts. Reviewing the available empirical literature, the paper explains how many of the assumptions driving the arbitration reform debate are unproven at best and flatly wrong at worst. It then tries to sketch out the economic impact of any move by Congress …

The Olympic Binding Arbitration Clause And The Court Of Arbitration For Sport: An Analysis Of Due Process Concerns, Jason Gubi

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Economia Da Arbitragem: Escolha Racional E Geração De Valor, Bruno Meyerhof Salama, Antonio Celso Pugliese

Bruno Meyerhof Salama

Why Arbitrate? The Questionable Quest For Efficiency In Hallstreet Street Associates, Llc V. Mattel, Inc., David K. Kessler

David K Kessler

The Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) makes arbitration agreements between private parties legally enforceable. The policy favoring arbitration underlying the FAA has been justified as serving two ends: it protects freedom of contract, and it creates an efficient alternative dispute resolution system. Previous decisions by the Court have indicated a belief that, when those two goals come into conflict, the result that preserves freedom of contract should prevail. In Hallstreet Associates, L.L.C. v. Mattel, Inc., however, a recent case involving the Federal Arbitration Act, the Court’s decision preserved perceived efficiency at the expense of freedom of contract. The Court held that …

Arbitration And Article Iii, Peter B. Rutledge

Vanderbilt Law Review

Arbitration implicates serious constitutional concerns that have not received adequate attention in case law or commentary. Recent litigation in the D.C. Circuit over the constitutionality of the North American Free Trade Agreement ("NAFTA") represents the most recent, high-profile example. A centerpiece of NAFTA and its implementing legislation is an arbitration mechanism that divests Article III courts of virtually all jurisdiction over countervailing duty and anti-dumping claims and invests that authority in panels of Associate Professor of Law, Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America. Arbitration implicates serious constitutional concerns that have not received adequate attention in case law or …

Arbitration And Article Iii, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

Does arbitration violate Article III? Despite the critical need for a coherent theory to answer this question, few commentators or courts have made serious attempts to provide one. For much of the country's history, federal courts conveniently could avoid this nettlesome question. Prior to the twentieth century, courts simply declined to enforce pre-dispute arbitration agreements as unenforceable attempts to appropriate their jurisdiction. From the early decades of the twentieth century (with the enactment of the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) in 1925) through the 1960s, the non-arbitrability doctrine prevented arbitrators from resolving issues of federal statutory law. Notably, while both of …

Non-Signatories And The New York Convention, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

In the context of arbitrations subject to the New York Convention, the term ,non-signatory' might evoke several lines of inquiry. Must commitments to arbitrate be signed? What legal framework guides decision-making about who agreed to arbitrate? How should courts monitor an arbitrator's assertion of jurisdiction over someone who never signed an arbitration agreement?

The second of these matters - rules about who agreed to arbitrate - will retain our attention in this paper. While few commentators deny that arbitration rests on consent,¹ less unanimity exists about what exactly constitutes such consent when one side contests that it ever waived …

Looking Into A Crystal Ball: Courts' Inevitable Refusal To Enforce Parties' Contracts To Expand Judicial Review Of Non-Domestic Arbitral Awards, Eric S. Chafetz

Eric S. Chafetz

Courts have not addressed whether parties can contract to expand the judicial review provisions in Article (“Art.”) V of the New York Convention (the "NY Convention"). When courts do address the issue, they will rely on the resolution of two prior issues: (1) whether parties can rely on the vacatur provisions in Art. 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”), in a vacatur proceeding under the NY Convention and (2) whether parties can rely on manifest disregard of the law and other grounds of review implied under Art. 1 of the FAA, in a vacatur proceeding under the NY Convention. …

A Strategic Functionalist Approach To International Commercial Mediation, Antonin I. Pribetic

Antonin I. Pribetic

Mediation in the international context is a relatively recent phenomenon. As an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanism, third-party neutral mediation is firmly entrenched in the legal ethos and procedural rules of most common law jurisdictions; such as the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. However, in the rest of the world, including many European, Latin American and Asian nations with civil law traditions, mediation remains an elusive concept. Some commentators suggest this may be due in part to differences in systemic (i.e. adversarial vs. inquisitorial) and cultural (i.e. mediation vs. conciliation) orientations.

This paper considers whether International Mediation is …

International Commercial Arbitration In Cuba, Kevin S. Tuininga

Kevin S Tuininga

This article discusses the prospect of international commercial arbitration in Cuba.

Pigs Do Fly: A New Test Limiting The Scope Of Arbitration Clauses In South Carolina, Stephanie R. Lamb

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Are Contingent-Fee Attorneys Deterred?: How Courts Can More Effectively Police Adhesive Arbitration Agreements, Kenyon Harbison

Kenyon D Harbison

If you’re like me, you become bound by a new arbitration agreement almost every day, sometimes without even knowing it. They are included with banking and credit card statements, in most employment contracts, and in most purchase agreements. When we make purchases online we ‘click’ our assent to them without reading them. When we receive them in the mail we signal our assent by failing to opt out. But what happens when we are injured, defrauded, or cheated, try to sue, and find we are instead subject to arbitration? What standards can we expect courts to apply if we challenge …