Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons^™

Rico's Long Arm, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

RICO has for over 50 years presented something of a parlor game for lawyers, mostly because its text leaves wide latitude in interpretation. And, as is often the case with RICO, resolution of one question begets more. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin proves no exception. Here, the Court brought some clarity to a question left open by RJR Nabisco: viz, what must one plead and prove to satisfy the “domestic injury” requirement necessary to invoke an extraterritorial application of RICO. The Court held that a foreign plaintiff can indeed, given the right facts and circumstances, establish …

Automating Fairness? Artificial Intelligence In The Chinese Court, Rachel E. Stern, Benjamin L. Liebman, Margaret Roberts, Alice Z. Wang

Faculty Scholarship

How will surging global interest in data analytics and artificial intelligence transform the day-to-day operations of courts, and what are the implications for judicial power? In the last five years, Chinese courts have come to lead the world in their efforts to deploy automated pattern analysis to monitor judges, standardize decision-making, and observe trends in society. This Article chronicles how and why Chinese courts came to embrace artificial intelligence, making public tens of millions of court judgments in the process. Although technology is certainly being used to strengthen social control and boost the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, examining …

What Does It Mean To Be ‘Pro-Arbitration’?, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

International arbitration commentators commonly ask of a proposed policy or practice whether it is ‘pro-’ or ‘anti-arbitration’. Framing the question that way presupposes a shared understanding of what does or does not make a policy or practice arbitration-friendly. In truth, the ways in which policies or practices may affect international arbitration’s well-being are manifold. They may even distinctly serve international arbitration’s well-being in some respects while equally distinctly disserving it in others. It behooves those who take international; arbitration’s well-being seriously to acknowledge the multiplicity of metrics for identifying what is ‘pro-’ and what is ‘anti-arbitration’ and to seek the …

Gateway-Schmateway: An Exchange Between George Bermann And Alan Rau, Alan Scott Rau, George Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

What role do national courts play in international arbitration? Is international arbitration an “autonomous dispute resolution process, governed primarily by non-national rules and accepted international commercial rules and practices” where the influence of national courts is merely secondary? Or, in light of the fact that “international arbitration always operates in the shadow of national courts,” is it not more accurate to say that national courts and international arbitration act in partnership? On April 27, 2015, the Pepperdine Law Review convened a group of distinguished authorities from international practice and academia to discuss these and other related issues for a symposium …

Protecting The Right Of Citizens To Aggregate Small Claims Against Businesses, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Government Of Sudan V. Sudan’S People’S Liberation Movement/Army (“Abyei Arbitration”), Coalter G. Lathrop

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

Why Courts Review Arbitral Awards, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

Judicial review of arbitral awards constitutes a form of risk management. In most countries courts may vacate decisions of perverse arbitrators who have ignored basic procedural fairness, as well as those of alleged arbitrators who have attempted to resolve matters never properly submitted to their jurisdiction. In some countries judges may also correct legal error or monitor an award's consistency with public policy.

Public scrutiny of arbitration is inevitable at the time of award recognition. Judges can hardly ignore the basic fairness of an arbitral proceeding when asked to give an award res judicata effect by seizing assets or staying …

The Division Of Legal Labor In Rural Haiti, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

This paper explores the institutional facilities available to Haitian peasants for the settlement of their disputes. More specifically, it compares the institution of the Chef de Section - the lowest administrative appointee in the Haitian countryside and the Justice of the Peace - the lowest ranking judicial institution provided by the Haitian legal system. The paper further advances the hypothesis that at the present time there is a shift in the division of labor between the two institutions, in favor of the Justice of the Peace, and that this shift may be attributed to processes of social differentiation currently detectable …