Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons^™

Arbitration As Contract: The Need For A Fully Developed And Comprehensive Set Of Statutory Default Legal Rules, Jack Graves

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This article addresses an increasingly important topic in today’s commercial world—the United States Federal Arbitration Act. While arbitration under this Act has been subject to ever increasing criticism and calls for reform on a variety of fronts (often from the perspective of consumer or employment arbitration), this article focuses specifically on commercial, business-to-business arbitration and critically evaluates the Act as a set of default legal rules governing arbitration as a unique contractual business relationship.

The article first looks at arbitration from a contractual default rules perspective, and then employs this perspective to analyze (1) the existing federal statutory scheme, (2) …

Regulating Mandatory Arbitration, Thomas V. Burch

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Over the last twenty-five years, the Supreme Court has relied on party autonomy and the national policy favoring arbitration to expand the Federal Arbitration Act’s scope beyond Congress’s original intent. Choosing these loaded premises has allowed the Court to reach the outcomes it desires while denying that it is making any political or moral judgments in its decisions – a type of bureaucratic formalism. One controversial outcome of the Court’s formalism, overall, has been the increased prevalence of mandatory arbitration. Although it reduces judicial caseloads and lowers companies’ dispute-resolution costs, it also restricts or eliminates individual rights and reduces public …

"Competence-Competence And Separability-American Style", Published As Chapter 8 In International Arbitration And International Commercial Law: Synergy, Convergence And Evolution, Jack M. Graves, Yelena Davydan

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No abstract provided.

"We Can Work It Out": Using Cooperative Mediation--A Blend Of Collaborative Law And Traditional Mediation--To Resolve Divorce Disputes, Elena Langan

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No abstract provided.

Mediation Representation: Representing Clients Anywhere, Harold Abramson

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No abstract provided.

Manifest Disregard And The Imperfect Procedural Justice Of Arbitration, Thomas V. Burch

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Arbitration is an efficient dispute-resolution system that respects parties’ right to an accurate award. But because arbitration is designed to be efficient, accuracy is not guaranteed. This presents a challenge when courts are asked to confirm or vacate arbitrators’ decisions. Judges dislike approving inaccurate awards, especially in cases where parties have unequal bargaining power. Yet, judges also recognize arbitration’s limited-review principle. So they are forced to balance their desire for accuracy against arbitration’s efficiency policy. Efficiency typically wins at the expense of accurate outcomes.

This Article contends that courts place too much emphasis on the efficiency policy in mandatory arbitration. …

Lawyerless Dispute Resolution: Rethinking A Paradigm, Jean R. Sternlight

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Do participants in mediation and arbitration have attorneys? Do they need them? Although the phenomenon of pro se litigation has received substantial attention in recent years, few commentators or policymakers have focused on these questions. The failure to focus on the possible need for representation in mediation and arbitration is based on an often unstated premise that because ADR processes are purportedly non-adversarial or less adversarial than litigation, disputants need representation less in ADR than they do in litigation. This Article suggests that the failure to focus on the possible need for representation in mediation and arbitration is fundamentally misguided. …

The Potential Contribution Of Adr To An Integrated Curriculum: Preparing Law Students For Real World Lawyering, Jean R. Sternlight

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This Article briefly reviews the long history of critiques of legal education that highlight the failure to adequately prepare students for what they will and should do as attorneys. It takes a sober look at the hurdles reformers face when trying to make significant curricular changes and proposes a modest menu of reforms that interested faculty and law schools can largely achieve without investing substantial additional resources. This Article emphasizes the special contributions that alternative dispute resolution (ADR) can provide to legal education more generally. ADR instruction is an important corrective to a curriculum that routinely conveys the erroneous implication …

Arbitrating Disputes Between Companies And Individuals: Lessons From Abroad, Peter B. Rutledge, Anna W. Howard

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Congress is considered changes to the Federal Arbitration Act and the central premise underlying these bills is the idea that the parties to these agreements (typically there is an individual on one side and a company on the other) tend to occupy unequal bargaining positions. The drafters of these bills conclude from this that the individual’s choice to opt into arbitration before a dispute has arisen cannot be considered free and voluntary, and thus, the arbitration agreement should be considered void and unenforceable.

Defenders of these bills claim that the United States, when compared to other nations, stands alone in …

Arbitration Reform: What We Know And What We Need To Know, Peter B. Rutledge

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The future of commercial arbitration has become a centerpiece of the domestic congressional agenda. According to one estimate, ten different bills introduced in the 110th Congress would chip away at the enforceability of pre-dispute arbitration agreements. By far the most significant bill, the Arbitration Fairness Act, would retroactively invalidate arbitration agreements in all employment, consumer, securities and franchise contracts. An especially vague provision in a prior version of the bill would invalidate agreements involving claims under statutes intended to protect civil rights or designed to regulate transactions between parties of unequal bargaining power. Are these wise moves?

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

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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 …

Outward Bound To Other Cultures: Seven Guidelines For U.S. Dispute Resolution Trainers, Harold I. Abramson

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This article was inspired by the opportunity to observe a two day negotiation training program' put together by Hamline University School of Law in Rome. It was called "Developing 'Second Generation' Global Negotiation Education." The trainers conducted a high level program for around thirty sophisticated professionals. And over forty scholars observed the training and then spent another two days discussing what was observed. Based on that experience as an observer and my own experience teaching and training abroad, along with additional research, I have identified seven guidelines for U.S. trainers. These guidelines should help trainers reduce any cultural mishaps, prepare …

Dispute Resolution And The Quest For Justice, Jean R. Sternlight

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During and since the 1976 Pound conference, the rise of nonlitigation approaches has sparked an intense debate as to whether negotiation, mediation, and arbitration are consistent with justice or rule of law, and whether litigation itself is sufficiently accessible to support a quest for justice. This article offers observations on questions related to this debate, including whether procedure matters, the limits of procedural reform, whether some processes are more just than others, and how procedural reforms enhance justice.

Fixing The Mandatory Arbitration Problem: We Need The Arbitration Fairness Act Of 2009, Jean R. Sternlight

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No abstract provided.

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

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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 …

Ica And The Writing Requirement: Following Modern Trends Towards Liberalization Or Are We Stuck In 1958?, Jack Graves

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Article 7 of the Model Law was revised in 2006 to liberalize any requirements of form, consistent with modern commercial practices and modern legal trends reflected in national laws. To the extent adopted by national legislatures, either of the two available options under this revision will effectively eliminate any requirement of a “record of consent,” thus making arbitration agreements more easily enforceable in the adopting jurisdiction. However, any such revision of national laws on arbitration based on the revisions of Article 7 of the Model Law will not necessarily have any effect on enforcement of awards in other jurisdictions under …

Whither Arbitration?, Peter B. Rutledge

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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

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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

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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

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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 …

"Arbitration As A Final Award: Challenges And Enforcement" Published As Chapter 10 In International Sales Law And Arbitration: Problems, Cases, And Commentary, Jack M. Graves, Joseph F. Morrissey

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No abstract provided.

Crossing Borders Into New Ethical Territory: Ethical Challenges When Mediating Cross-Culturally, Harold Abramson

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No mediator wants to be charged with cultural imperialism when mediating private international disputes. And yet, mediators run this risk whenever the mediator resists doing what the parties want done. This cultural challenge is different than what mediators customarily encounter. Instead of the gap arising between the parties, the gap is between the mediator and the parties. In this article, I will consider how a mediator might ethically bridge mediator-parties gaps while generally avoiding the harsh charge of cultural imperialism. Through a hypothetical in which a mediator's values clash with the values of the parties, I will develop a four …

Mandating Minimum Quality In Mass Arbitration, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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The Supreme Court's decision in McMahon and its progeny has led many businesses and employers to embrace what was once deemed a localized, industry-specific practice. The "new" or "mass arbitration" only mildly resembles the traditional system employed by niches in industry for settling commercial matters among commercial actors. While the "old" system involved parties who were relatively equal in bargaining power and knowledge, these systems for mass arbitration lack a freely entered bargain and resemble more closely, contracts of adhesion. Privatized arbitration resolves issues of both statutory and substantive law, and there is a strong argument, given the inexperience of …

Introduction: Collaboration Good Or Bad: How Is It Working On The Colorado River?, Jean R. Sternlight

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This is an introduction to articles submitted as part of the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution’s Symposium, Collaboration and the Colorado River. The Symposium focused on the uses of collaboration to resolve environmental and natural resource disputes pertaining to the Colorado River.

This written version of the conference now builds upon the live event. We are most fortunate that many (unfortunately not all) of the speakers were able to contribute articles to comprise this written version of the Symposium. In their papers, presenters have expanded on their oral remarks and responded to points made by others during the conference.

Keeping Arbitrations From Becoming Kangaroo Courts, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Arbitration has grown rapidly during the past 20 years. Particularly notable and problematic is the rapid onset of new or mass arbitration that has resulted from the judiciary's modern favorable attitude toward enforcement of arbitration clauses, even those imposed upon consumers, employees, small vendors, and debtors as part of a standardized contract of adhesion. In a separate article (See "Mandating Minimum Quality in Mass Arbitration," 76 U. Cin. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2007)), I present a more comprehensive list of what I regard as the necessary steps that must be taken to insure minimally acceptable quality and fairness in mass arbitration. …

In Defense Of Mandatory Arbitration (If Imposed On The Company), Jean R. Sternlight

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Having spent much of her academic life battling companies' mandatory imposition of binding arbitration on consumers and employees, the author now switches gears. This Article contemplates whether mandatory binding arbitration is acceptable if imposed by the government on companies (governmental mandatory arbitration) rather than by companies on their employees and consumers (private mandatory arbitration). Specifically, the Article considers the possibility of statutes that would provide little guys (consumers and employees) with an opportunity to take their disputes to binding arbitration rather than litigation. If the little guys chose arbitration over litigation, post-dispute, companies would have to agree to such arbitration, …

Introduction: Dreaming About Arbitration Reform, Jean R. Sternlight

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This is an introduction to articles submitted as part of the Saltman Center for Dispute Resolution’s Symposium, Rethinking the Federal Arbitration Act: An Examination of Whether and How the Statute Should be Amended. The panelist’s remarks are divided into five categories: whether and when arbitration agreements ought to be enforceable, how responsibilities and legal issues should be divided among arbitrators and courts, terms under which courts should be able to vacate arbitral awards, multi-jurisdictional issues brought into play by the Federal Arbitration Act and its interpretation, and the FAA through a wide-angle lens rather than focusing on particular narrow aspects …

Consequences Of Power, Tamara Relis

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This Article challenges a basic premise that litigants and their attorneys broadly understand and desire similar things from litigation-track mediation processes. In providing new empirical research from medical malpractice cases, I offer disconcerting evidence of the surprising degree to which perceptions and meanings ascribed to these litigation-track processes are not only diverse, but frequently contradictory. I demonstrate that notwithstanding their different allegiances, lawyers on all sides of cases have correspondingly similar understandings of the meaning and purpose of litigation-track mediations. At the same time, I show how plaintiffs and defendants have the same understandings and visions of what mediation is …

The Effect Of Forum Selection Clauses On District Courts’ Authority To Compel Arbitration, Thomas V. Burch, John W. Hinchey

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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).

Selecting Mediators And Representing Clients In Cross-Cultural Disputes, Harold Abramson

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Even an adept negotiator can be baffled by cultural differences. When a negotiation reaches an impasse because of an unfamiliar cultural interest or a miscommunication between the parties due to different styles of communicating, negotiating, or decision-making, the negotiator might find it helpful to enlist assistance from a culturally-trained and culturally-appropriate mediator. This Article considers how such a third party can help you, as a negotiator, bridge cultural differences. It considers when to seek aid from a mediator, what the credentials of the mediator ought to be, and the impact of the mediator's approach on the way you represent your …