Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons^™

International Commercial Arbitration: Fifty Years After The New York Convention, Paul D. Carrington, Linda Silberman, Anne Marie Whitesell, Gabriel M. Wilner, George Bermann, Robert B. Davidson, William K. Slate Iii, Gary B. Born, Julian Davis Mortenson, Christopher M. Ryan, Maureen Weston, Brian White, C. Donald Johnson, Peter B. Rutledge

Conferences and Symposia to 2010

a one-day conference held at the Dean Rusk Center on January 30, 2009. The event, co-sponsored by the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law, featured Gary Born as keynote speaker and other leaders in the field of international commercial arbitration including Robert Davidson, Executive Director of JAMS Arbitration Practice; William K. Slate, II, President, American Arbitration Association; and Anne Marie Whitesell, Former Secretary General of the ICC International Court of Arbitration.

The Case Against The Arbitration Fairness Act, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

The Arbitration Fairness Act is a well-intended but ultimately misguided attempt to address a system of dispute resolution that has largely worked well. The bill currently being considered by Congress rests on a series of flawed empirical premises. This article addresses three. First, though the bill posits that arbitration leaves consumers and employees worse off, data demonstrate individuals overall are often better off under a system with enforceable predispute arbitration agreements than a system without them. Second, although the bill promises improved access to justice, the proposal actually erects more impediments. Third, though the bill suggests that postdispute arbitration will …

Introduction: The Constitutional Law Of International Commercial Arbitration, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

An exceptional feature of international arbitration is the extensive and meaningful dialogue that takes places between scholars and practitioners in the field. Unlike some other disciplines where the camps appear to talk past each other, international arbitration enjoys a rich relationship between the two. Practitioners have written some of the most important scholarly works in the field, while scholars have worked on some of the most important cases. In January 2009, the University of Georgia Law School and its Dean Rusk Center were pleased to bring together an elite group of scholars and practitioners for a day-long conference on the …

Alive But Not Well: Manifest Disregard After Hall Street, Kevin P. Murphy

Georgia Law Review

Arbitration is supposed to make dispute resolution faster and more cost-effective for litigants. To this end, Congress severely limited the ways in which a court can review an arbitrator's decision. But for the last fifty years courts have allowed parties an additional non statutory avenue for challenging arbitration awards. Where an arbitrator makes a decision in manifest disregard of the law, a court may vacate the award. To prove manifest disregard,parties must prove the arbitrator was aware of the law that should govern the dispute, but deliberately chose to ignore it. This often-argued, but seldom successful, claim increases the costs …

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 …

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 …

Who Can Be Against Fairness? The Case Against The Arbitration Fairness Act, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

In this brief essay, I hope to lay out the case against the Arbitration Fairness Act.3 Part I of this Article addresses the “findings” on which the act is premised. It explains how in several respects the current research on arbitration flatly contradicts the premises animating those findings (in other respects, the data is incomplete, so the “findings” at best are better described as “untested hypotheses” or “assumptions”). Part II of this Article explains why postdispute arbitration is not a viable alternative to our present system of enforceable predispute arbitration clauses.

Discovery, Judicial Assistance And Arbitration: A New Tool For Cases Involving U.S. Entities?, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

Limited discovery is one of the regularly cited advantages of international arbitration, as opposed to international litigation, particularly in contrast to litigation in the US. courts. Recent decisions by US. courts, however, have threatened to upend this comparative advantage. Invoking a little known US. law, 28 U.S.C. section 1782, these courts have permitted parties in an arbitration to petition for subpoenas issued by US. courts against their adversaries or third parties. Bucking the trend in the academic literature, which largely supports this development, this article opposes reading section 1782 to authorize subpoenas in support of an arbitration. Not only does …

Judicial Review Of International Commercial Arbitral Awards By National Courts In The United States And India, Aparna D. Jujjavarapu

LLM Theses and Essays

Article V of the New York convention lays down the provisions under which the recognition and enforcement of an arbitral award may be refused. The United States and India are signatories to the Convention. Section 10(a) of the Federal Arbitration Act in the United States limits the scope of judicial review of the arbitral awards to a clear list of grounds of vacatur. The national courts of the United States have recognized several non-statutory grounds of which "manifest disregard of the law" as a standard of review is the focus in this thesis. In fact, the state of Georgia has …

The Need For A Transnational Appellate Arbitral Review Body, Priya Sampath

LLM Theses and Essays

This thesis analyzes the necessity for the establishment of a transnational body of arbitral appeal. The paper also elaborates on how the establishment such a body will serve as a suitable replacement for judicial review and be an effective source of appeal in general. Also prescribed are suggestions based on which the appellate body may be conceived.

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. …

How To Deal With Multi-Party Nominations Of Arbitrators In International Commercial Arbitration - A Comparative Study Of Appointment Procedures With Emphasis On U.S.-European Commerce Between Private Entities, Marie-Beatrix Tupy

LLM Theses and Essays

The nomination procedure for the Arbitral Tribunal in commercial arbitration is one of the crucial points in the arbitral procedure. Parties have to have in mind the provisions of the New York Convention regarding the setting aside of an award in case of a failure during the nomination procedure of the tribunal. Besides from the famous Dutco case on multi-party arbitrations and their nomination procedures have received highest interest within the international arbitral world. As the thesis will comparatively show, all major arbitral institutions have updated their Rules, countries have even rendered new legislation with respect to the nomination procedure …

Market Solutions To Market Problems: Re-Examining Arbitral Immunity As A Solution To Unfairness In Securities Arbitration, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

This paper addresses the fairness of securities arbitrations in the United States. A few decades ago, such a topic would have been relegated to the academic hinterlands. For the first fifty years following the enactment of the nation's securities laws, pre-dispute arbitration agreements between investors and the securities industry were not enforceable. In a series of decisions in the late 1980s, the Supreme Court reversed course and held that such disputes were indeed arbitrable. Following those decisions, arbitration quickly became the preferred method of dispute resolution for cases arising under the nation's securities laws, especially disputes between investors and broker-dealers. …

Recognition And Enforcement Of International Commercial Arbitration Awards, Shouhua Yu

LLM Theses and Essays

Arbitration is an effective way to solve disputes, through which parties from different countries can be partially free from anyone’s local jurisdiction. However, the recognition and enforcement of international arbitration awards still rely on the national court system. Since China opened its door to the world, more and more commercial disputes have been settled through arbitration. However, many foreign investors and writers have complained about the defects in the recognition and enforcement of arbitration awards in China. This paper will look into the causes of these defects in, and try to find ways to resolve the defects.

Toward A Contractual Approach To Arbitral Immunity, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

This Article breaks from conventional wisdom in both case law and scholarship. It proposes a simple but novel thesis: Arbitrators and arbitral institutions, in cases of voluntary submission of disputes, should not be entitled to any form of legal immunity. Instead, any limit on or waiver of the arbitrator's or institution's liability should come in the form of a contractual release-either adopted in the parties' arbitration agreement or negotiated between the parties and the arbitrator.

Central to this thesis is a distinction between two types of immunity. The first form of immunity is “contractual immunity.” The hallmark of contractual immunity …

Necessity Never Made A Good Bargain: When Consumer Arbitration Agreements Prohibit Class Relief, Thomas V. Burch

Scholarly Works

The American system of arbitration is constantly evolving. From the first formal arbitration tribunal in 1786—established by the New York Chamber of Commerce—to the creation of the Federal Arbitration Act in 1925—passed to suppress judicial hostility towards arbitration -- the system has continuously adapted to accommodate changing business practices and rising judicial concerns over the legitimacy of the institution. In fact, the system’s adaptation has been so effective that the Supreme Court now recognizes a “national policy favoring arbitration.” This “national policy” is the most recent phase of the arbitration evolution, and it raises several concerns. Most significantly, lower courts …

Georgia General Assembly Adopts "Manifest Disregard" As A Ground For Vacating Arbitration Awards: How Will Georgia Courts Treat The New Standard?, John W. Hinchey, Thomas V. Burch

Scholarly Works

Generally, courts may only set aside arbitration awards on the grounds listed in the Federal Arbitration Act or the applicable state arbitration code. However, all federal circuit courts and a few state courts have adopted a non-statutory exception that allows a court to overturn an arbitrator's decision if the arbitrator has exemplified a "manifest disregard" of the law.

In 2002, after several years of tentative lower court decisions, the Georgia Supreme Court, in Progressive Data Systems v. Jefferson Holding Corporation, held that manifest disregard is not a proper ground for vacatur in Georgia. The court emphasized that Georgia's Arbitration Code …

On The Importance Of Institutions: Review Of Arbitral Awards For Legal Errors, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

In my view, legislatures, rather than courts or parties, should decide whether (and to what extent) courts should review arbitral awards for errors of law. The optimal legislative mechanism should not be compulsory but should offer parties the choice whether to "opt-in" to this regime of expanded review by inserting language to that effect in their arbitration agreement. A legislative solution with an "opt-in" feature has a sounder doctrinal foundation, better respects the distribution of power between various branches of government, involves a lower risk of error and minimizes transaction costs. From this position, two additional conclusions follow: first, courts …

Dispute Resolution And Dementia: Seeking Solutions, Erica F. Wood

Georgia Law Review

With the rise in dementia, 2nd and 3rd party disputes will be more frequent. The elderly population with cognitive impairments is growing rapidly. By 2030, the population aged 65 years and older is expected to reach 70 million, more than double the number in 1998.1 Moreover, the older population itself is getting older. While a decline in mental function is not an inevitable part of the normal aging process, the likelihood of dementia or related brain disorders increases with advancing age. The prevalence of dementia doubles every five years in the elderly, growing from a disorder that affects one percent …

A Trade/Human Rights Linkage By The United States: Is Enforcing Human Rights By Use Of Trade Sanctions Effective?, Blaise Omondi Odhiambo

LLM Theses and Essays

Universally held basic human rights must remain separate from political rights. Such basic human rights are those that are so universal that all societies, systems, nations, and ideology could, and do espouse them. Conversely, political rights are those that are dependent upon compatibility with the system of government in place and arc therefore far less likely to gamer universal support. An effective multilateral enforcement mechanism can only succeed if there are universal agreement and acceptance of the protected rights. Accordingly, at the outset of such a mechanism, only basic human rights may be enforced through trade sanctions. Once such a …

Public Policy Defense In International Commercial Arbitration, Mingqiang Qian

LLM Theses and Essays

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how public policy defense functions in international commercial arbitration and whether it will block the development of international commercial arbitration. Chapter II deals with the role of public policy in international private law. This chapter examines the origins of public policy in common law countries and its functions in international private law. It is difficult to evaluate public policy as a precise concept because of its relative nature. Nevertheless, to limit its application in international private law, legal scholars have tried to clarify differences between domestic public policy, international public policy, and …

Commercial Arbitration In The U.S.: The Arbitrability Of Disputes Arising From Statute-Based Claims, Sylvie Frankignoul

LLM Theses and Essays

A leading contemporary expert in arbitration has explained: "The concept of arbitrability determines the point at which the experience of contractual freedom ends and the public mission of adjudication begins. In effect, it establishes a dividing line between the transactional pursuit of private rights and courts' role as custodians and interpreters of the public interest." 1 A major part of the arbitrability doctrine deals with the kind of claims that can fall within the scope of agreements for private dispute resolution. Arbitration clauses are an integral part of the parties' transactions. Nevertheless, the American judiciary historically has refused to enforce …

Arbitral Situs: Considerations And Consequences, Rajdeep Singh

LLM Theses and Essays

It is the law of the forum that is applicable to matters like arbitrability of the dispute, the validity of the arbitration agreement, the jurisdiction of the arbitrators, their appointment, removal and replacement and the challenge to their authority. Apart from these matters the law of the arbitral situs also governs the conflict of laws rules applicable to the dispute. Though the principle of party autonomy allows the parties to agree to a procedural law other than that of the arbitral situs, they still have to comply with the mandatory provisions of the law of the venue. In case they …

The Interpretation Of The Remedial Provisions Of The Cisg, Evelina Wilhelmina Innocentia Visser

LLM Theses and Essays

The drafting process of the most successful international uniform law of the last decades, the 1980 United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG) reflected that in order to become a set of "well-balanced subsidiary rules," international uniform must be drafted and implemented carefully. It is essential that an international uniform law is adapted to diverse cultures. The different needs and demands of the varied socio-economic systems and legal structures, perceptions, procedures, and cultures of the distinct legal systems of this world are a main and omnipresent consideration and must be capable of absorbing the unified law. Either …

The Dispute Settlement Systems Of Wto And Nafta - Analysis And Comparison, Patrick Specht

LLM Theses and Essays

The aim of this thesis is to determine whether the dispute settlement institutions of the WTO and the NAFTA meet the standard, to compare the two systems, and to evaluate them. An issue that should be dealt with first is the question of comparability. Is it possible to compare the WTO and the NAFTA regarding their conflict resolution procedures? Or are they too different because one agreement works on the global level and the other on a regional one? Their institutions and their scope may differ, but they are still conducive to comparison because the underlying structure of these two …

Enforcement Of International Arbitral Awards, Davd Levon Shahzadeyan

LLM Theses and Essays

The primary objective of this thesis is to show the proposals that have been made in order to amend the New York Convention. This study tries to analyze the problems that the proposed modifications seek to eliminate. In general these proposals were aimed at amending the Convention in order to widen the scope of application of the Convention and to eliminate the difficulties with the enforcement of arbitral awards in national courts Chapter two of this study gives a historical overview of the multilateral enforcement conventions prior to the New York Convention and a brief drafting history of the New …

Investment Disputes And Jurisdiction Of The International Center For Settlement Of Investment Disputes (Icsid), Vakhid Yakubjanovitch Saparov

LLM Theses and Essays

This thesis will analyze one of the ways in which disputes arising from developed countries' investment activities in the developing countries are decided. The issues of investment and disputes are of great importance to the developed countries as well as to developing countries. The scope of the issues gives rise to a multitude of questions of national and international law in an interdependent world economy. International investment attracts the close attention of international law because it brings the movement of people and financial resources from one country to another and such movement gives rise to a potential risk for conflict …

Reorganization A Comparative Study Of Reorganization In Denmark And In The United States, Poul Jagd Mogensen

LLM Theses and Essays

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and discuss a list of specific problems in the current Danish system and in this analysis to examine how these problems are dealt with under the United States laws on reorganization. The thesis consists of five parts in addition to this Introduction. Part II is an introduction to the laws on reorganization in Denmark and in the United States. Part II also includes a brief introduction to out-of-court workouts as an alternative to reorganization under the bankruptcy laws. Part III provides statistical information on the number of reorganizations, the outcome of reorganizations, …

The Role Of The Organization Of African Unity (Oau) In Regional Conflict Resolution And Dispute Settlement, Peter Mweti Munya

LLM Theses and Essays

The emergence of an artificially constructed modern state with internal contradictions, sophisticated state apparatus, and weaponry, coupled with external forces has made Africa one of the most unstable regions in the world, and peace prospects a daunting task. The post-cold war era punctuated by forces of economic liberalization and dominance of the Breton Woods institutions in the economic management of the developing countries has not only accelerated the economic marginalization of Africa placing her at the fringes of the global economy but also wrought insecurity in their wake. This post-cold war and serves to emphasize the need for the OAU …