Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons^™

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Corporate Scenarios: Drawing Lessons From History, Madison Condon

Seattle University Law Review

As corporations are increasingly pressed to reveal information about their exposure to climate-related risks, they are often asked to undertake and disclose the outcome of “scenario analysis.” In this exercise, corporations, including financial institutions, examine how their business would fare under different pathways the future may take. One oft-used scenario, for example, is the International Energy Agency’s “Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Energy Sector.” This Essay presents a history of the use of scenarios as a corporate planning tool, particularly in the oil industry, arguing that it is key for understanding our present moment and the role of …

Shareholder Expression In A Time Of Heightened Political Tension, Aaron A. Dhir

Seattle University Law Review

In this article, I provide context for my forthcoming research project on shareholder proposals and racial equity audits. Since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, progressive shareholder actors have increasingly used the proposal mechanism to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice-related goals. These proposals have frequently gone beyond requesting the usual corporate fare of diversity trainings, intersectionality workshops, affinity groups, etc. Instead, a more ambitious type of proposal asks corporate America to conduct racial equity audits, defined as “an independent, objective and holistic analysis of a company’s policies, practices, products, services and efforts to combat systemic racism …

Corporate Governance Speech, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

The State has always regulated the intra-firm communications that make corporate governance possible, most commonly by mandating disclosures of information by a corporation to its shareholders. Some such laws are labeled “securities regulation,” but securities regulation is a broad category that extends to speech by actors who are outside the corporate enterprise as well. Also, the conventional securities regulation category does not capture all such laws; other examples, including informationforcing mandates, can be found in state corporate law. This Article uses the term “corporate governance speech” to describe the communications among shareholders, directors, and officers through which corporate governance is …

Dark Accounting Matter, Colleen Honigsberg

Seattle University Law Review

Physicists calculate that approximately 85% of the matter in the universe is composed of “dark matter” that “does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is therefore difficult to detect.” The S&P 500 currently trades at a price-to-book value of 4.2, suggesting that book value accounts for less than 20% of the S&P 500’s market value. The remaining 80% appears nowhere in these firms’ balance sheets—it is invisible to contemporary accounting techniques and constitutes “dark accounting matter.”

Some “dark accounting matter” is composed of factors commonly described as components of “ESG.” Human capital, for example, is an intangible asset …

The Employees’ Dilemma: Balancing Internal Reporting, Whistleblowing, And Insider Trading Risks, Geeyoung Min

Seattle University Law Review

The Essay examines how recent developments in insider trading regulations and whistleblower reward programs can lead to unintended and counterproductive results of discouraging employees from using internal reporting channels within corporate compliance programs. While the presence of a robust and well-functioning corporate compliance program is a critical factor both in mitigating the level of public enforcement actions against companies and in protecting corporate managers from liability in private litigation, these programs often provide little incentive for employees to report potential misconduct internally.

Corporate compliance programs are designed to promote the upward information flow within the company, which is essential for …

How The Antidiscrimination Law Of Commercial Transactions Really Works, Helen Norton

Seattle University Law Review

A variety of businesses now cite 303 Creative when seeking First Amendment protection for their refusal to serve certain customers based on those customers’ protected class status. How this litigation will play out remains to be seen. But future courts need not, and should not, repeat the 303 Creative Court’s misunderstanding of how the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions actually works.

Part I of this Essay explains the Court’s longstanding understanding of the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions, and then describes the Court’s failure to engage with this precedent in 303 Creative. Part II then identifies the 303 Creative decision’s …

Understanding The Big Three’S Wavering Support Of Environmental And Social Shareholder Proposals, Jeff Schwartz, Jefferson Jensen

Seattle University Law Review

Because of their substantial equity portfolios, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street (the Big 3) are central players in corporate governance. It is, therefore, critical to understand how they vote. One puzzle is that their support for shareholder proposals on environmental and social matters appears to waiver. In 2020, for instance, BlackRock supported 11.1% of environmental proposals at S&P 500 firms. In 2021, it seemingly reversed course, supporting 55.2%. It then flipped again, supporting 32.1% in 2022. Such statistics suggest that the Big 3 are constantly changing their views on these topics. This Article seeks to better understand whether this is …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

What We Can Learn From The Notorious P&Id V. Nigeria, Emily Granja

Arbitration Brief

On October 23, 2023, England’s High Court of Justice ruled in favor of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in Nigeria v. Process & Industrial Developments Ltd. (P&ID). Reviewing the case, the High Court vacated P&ID’s $10 billion arbitral award after finding significant evidence of fraud and bribery. While the High Court’s decision marked a victory for Nigeria, it also shook the international arbitration system. This case exposed some of international arbitration’s flaws and generated new concerns regarding the confidentiality inherent in the arbitration process.

The Emerging Framework For The Recognition & Enforcement Of Annulled Arbitral Awards In U.S. Jurisprudence, Sarah Klim

Articles

The recognition and enforcement of foreign awards are governed almost universally by the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (the "New York Convention"). However, this recognition and enforcement necessarily invokes national judicial power. The New York Convention does not devise a harmonized set of rules for courts to follow when faced with a request to recognize and enforce an annulled award. This has resulted in divergent approaches by national courts, which derive "not from any perversity of judges but from good faith variants in perspectives on how to construe the treaty."  This paper seeks …

The Singapore Convention On Mediation: A New Framework For International Settlement Enforcement, Peter Phillips, Zachary Calo, Harold I. Abramson

Scholarly Works

The Singapore Convention on Mediation undeniably represents a landmark development in the field of international dispute resolution, providing a long-awaited and much-needed international enforcement framework that has the significant potential to substantially enhance the credibility, attractiveness, and overall effectiveness of mediated settlement agreements in cross border commercial disputes. By establishing a more predictable and reliable mechanism for the enforcement of these voluntarily reached agreements, the Convention directly addresses a critical gap that had long existed in the international dispute resolution landscape, particularly when compared to the well-established regime for the enforcement of international arbitral awards under the New York Convention. …

Green Dividends: A Case Study In Green Dividends And The Conditions For Private Ordering Solutions, Anne M. Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

This Essay introduces a novel private ordering solution to facilitate corporate investments in pro-social and environmental initiatives: Green dividends. Green dividends are an optional increase in shareholder dividends that are returned to the company to be reinvested in environmental initiatives or kept by a shareholder.

Green dividends pose an alternative to the current gridlocked debate that corporations can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and shouldn’t even try to act in pro-social or environmental ways. Turning the common refrains on their head converts each narrative into an element for a successful private ordering solution: authority, accountability, shareholder buy-in, and government- backed enforcement. With Green …

Does Climate Disclosure Work To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Emerging Evidence Suggests Cautious Optimism, Cynthia A. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Significant regulatory resources have been spent developing global, voluntary climate and sustainability disclosure standards, such as the TCFD, TNRD, and ISSB’s Sustainability and Climate Disclosure standards, or domestically required disclosures, such as in the EU and in the U.S. Thus, it is important to evaluate whether this disclosure, particularly voluntary, qualitative disclosure, will have the power to shift the allocation of capital, will have a significant effect on the management of climate risk within firms, and ultimately will reduce climate change risk and biodiversity loss.

In this Article, several interrelated questions will be discussed. First, what does the empirical evidence …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

International Arbitration And Conflicts Of Law: Three Hard Questions For Symeon, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

The presence of a foreign element in a legal relationship inevitably introduces intricate choice-of-law issues. This postulate holds especially true in the context of international arbitration. Arbitration involves an exceptional degree of procedural freedom (including over the choice of the applicable law) and a distinctive conflict-of-laws regime that may be unbound from a particular national legal system. This article examines several choice-of-law issues arising in the context of international arbitration. In particular, Section I of this article addresses whether the United Nations Convention on Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, otherwise known as the New York Convention, is selfexecuting …

Scaling 'Reverse Cfius': A Comparative Review Of Outbound Foreign Investment, Hannah Pérez

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The note examines the evolution of U.S. regulations on outbound foreign investments, particularly under Executive Order 14105, known as "Reverse CFIUS," aimed at mitigating national security risks by restricting investments in critical industries in countries like China. It explores the legal, economic, and geopolitical implications of these regulations and compares them with similar measures in the EU, Japan, and Australia, emphasizing the need for international cooperation to effectively address these security concerns.

The Position Of The United States Of America Vis-A-Vis The Question Of Western Sahara: Assessing The Role Of Think Tanks In The Conflict, Hamid Baadeche

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

ABSTRACT

The Position of the United States of America Vis-à-vis the Question of Western Sahara: Assessing the Role of Think Tanks in the Conflict

Hamid Baadeche

Think tank organizations, particularly in the United States, have become a prominent feature of the political landscape. They act as advocates for specific policies that they consider beneficial for the country or a particular societal group. They function as a primary source of information, which they then aim to transform into well-informed policies and sound decisions. They are referred to as "the revolving doors," "idea brokers," and "idea factory." As such, their foremost objective …

Human Rights Forum Shopping In Transnational Sport Disputes, Ilias Bantekas

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Professional athletes must adhere to the dispute resolution mechanisms contained in their agreements with sport governing bodies (SGBs). These typically provide for SGB institutional arbitration with appeals against such awards to CAS, although in some instances direct recourse to CAS is also possible. These mechanisms do not cater for attendant human rights claims arising from the underlying dispute. This article suggests that a variety of sui generis forum shopping possibilities are available to address this deficit. Applicants may approach national courts with a sufficient jurisdictional link to the SGB in question by raising constitutional (and by extension human rights) and …

Does The Loss Of Chance Doctrine Have A Chance In International Sport Arbitration?, Dmitry A. Pentsov

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The Article analyzes whether and, if so, how, the loss of chance doctrine providing the basis for claims against person who deprived victims of a chance of occurrence of a certain result or decreased this chance could be used in international sport arbitration at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). It provides a comparative analysis of applicability of this doctrine under English law, French law, and the law of the State of New York to sport competitions and outlines potential problems of utilizing this doctrine in the CAS arbitration through domestic law based on choice-of-law rules. The Article argues …

A New Governance Framework In Cross-Border Tax Policymaking, Tamir Shanan, Doron Narotzki, Noam Zamir

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The first tax treaty can probably be traced to the end of the 19th century: the treaty between the Swiss Federal Council (on behalf of the Canton of Vaud) and Great Britain. However, most tax scholars refer to the period following World War I, including the work of the League of Nations, as the formative period in which the international tax regime was founded. In the 1920s, the League of Nations formed a committee of four renowned economists that was asked to formulate a set of rules that would assist states in allocating taxing rights of cross-border income and gains …

Empowering Ukraine’S First Legal Responders: Ukrainian-Us Collaboration And Clinics, Susan Felstiner, Davida Finger, Michelle Greenberg-Kobrin, Maria Tsypiashchuck

Articles

At the onset of the full-scale Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, U.S. law clinic professors worked alongside the leadership of the Association of Legal Clinics of Ukraine. The mutual objective was to support Ukrainian law professors and facilitate the continued legal education of their students, particularly the acquisition of skills typically taught in law clinics. Ultimately, the online partnership that developed focused on skills training and included seven Ukrainian law schools, faculty from over six U.S. law schools and one private law firm, and USAID Justice for All Activity in Ukraine. The overall goals of this collaboration were to …

The Adr Movement: Theoretical Aspects And Practical Potential, Craig A. Mcewen

Maine Law Review

My mission in this paper is to draw upon what we know from the active and lively domestic dispute resolution movements in the United States, Canada, and beyond to identify some of the prospects for and potential problems in developing a dispute resolution system for Canadian-United States trade disputes. Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is flourishing in the 1980's. Increasing numbers of individuals as well as public and private programs identify their work as alternative dispute resolution. These include private mediation practitioners, ADR partners in major law firms, private organizations such as EnDispute, which will arrange mini-trials and other dispute resolution …

Privatizing Dispute Resolution Under The Free Trade Agreement: Truth Or Fancy?, Leon E. Trakman

Maine Law Review

Replete with evidence of extensive forum shopping, unending discovery procedures, and countless delays in the formal adjudicatory process, the case for an alternative, more specialized medium for the resolution of trade disputes between the United States and Canada has grown more pressing. The problem, however, is in being convinced that the alternative, embodied in the proposed Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, addresses the deficiencies in the existing medium for dispute resolution without introducing greater social and personal costs of its own. A government, in distancing itself from dispute resolution, also separates itself from the process through which social problems are …

Dispute Resolution Provisions Of The Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, David P. Cluchey

Maine Law Review

Dispute resolution is a major focus of the recently signed Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement. This focus was heavily influenced by two factors. The first is a significant continuing concern about the dispute resolution procedures and mechanisms under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The second factor is the general Canadian perception that trade proceedings under United States law are substantially influenced by political concerns and that under a trade agreement, Canadian businesses would need some protection from United States trade regulation. The general dispute resolution provisions of the Free Trade Agreement, which are found primarily in Chapter …

Dispute Settlement Mechanisms Under The Free Trade Agreement, Ton J.M. Zuijdwijk

Maine Law Review

The purpose of this paper is to review the dispute settlement mechanisms that are contained in the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement. The two countries reached agreement on the main features of the Free Trade Agreement on October 3, 1987. Thereafter, the elements of the Agreement were converted into the legal text of the Free Trade Agreement and signed by Prime Minister Mulroney and President Reagan on January 2, 1988. Legislation implementing the Free Trade Agreement has been introduced in the Parliament of Canada and in the United States Congress. In Canada the ordinary rules for legislative enactments will apply. …

Canadian Acceptance Of International Commercial Arbitration, John E.C. Brierly

Maine Law Review

A few years ago it would have been impossible to speak of Canadian "acceptance" of international commercial arbitration. Canada had not adhered to any international convention on arbitration, and Canadian legislation did not specifically regulate arbitration in commercial dealings or when it involved some non-national element. There was no federal enactment on the subject. Canadian provincial legislation, whether the civil law of Quebec or the common law of the rest of Canada, had not greatly evolved from the 19th century position expressed in legislation based upon the legal traditions of France and the United Kingdom of the same period. No …

A Canadian Perspective On U.S. Administered Protection And The Free Trade Agreement, Alan M. Rugman

Maine Law Review

The negotiation of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement over the 1986-1988 period builds upon over 130 years of bilateral trade and investment policy. With Canada's economy being roughly one-tenth the size of that of the United States, the negotiation of commercial arrangements to govern the bilateral trade and investment relationship assumes great importance in the smaller partner. The size asymmetry means that Canada, as the smaller nation, needs to secure a rules-based system rather than a power-based system in its trading relationship with the United States, which accounts for nearly 80% of its exports. Canada is also the largest …

The Reception Of Arbitration In United States Law, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Maine Law Review

The willingness of any national legal system to endorse the process of arbitral adjudication can be measured by whether its governing statutory law and accompanying case law sustain the validity of arbitration agreements and limit judicial supervision of arbitral proceedings and awards—in effect, whether the laws of a nation establish a cooperative relationship between the courts and the arbitral process. On both scores, United States law on arbitration evinces a clear determination to support the process. The development of the law has given the framework of arbitral adjudication its necessary systemic autonomy. Since 1970, when the United States ratified the …

Alternative Dispute Resolution In International Trade And Business, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Maine Law Review

This workshop, which was held at the University of Maine School of Law on May 27, 1987, consisted of an informal discussion among an interdisciplinary group of experts. The purpose of the workshop was to generate ideas and recommendations regarding the utility of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in international trade and business, with special reference to Canadian-United States trade relations. The discussion also explored the possible commonalties of domestic and international dispute resolution in the hope of developing a basis for a generic alternative dispute resolution methodology.