Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons^™

Alternative Dispute Resolution In Montana: A Catalog Of The Local Rules In Montana District Courts, Brianna Anderson, Brock Flynn

Student Scholarship

A catalog of the Local ADR Rules for the Montana Judicial District Courts, including rules about settlement conferences, mediation, and informal domestic relations trials.

Lopez V. Cintas Corporation: Another Interstate Headache, Kyle Chrisman

Texas A&M Law Review

This Note analyzes a 2022 Fifth Circuit opinion concerning two issues: first, whether local delivery drivers are engaged in interstate commerce, and second, who decides challenges to arbitrability. In Lopez v. Cintas Corporation, the Fifth Circuit first held that local delivery drivers are not engaged in interstate commerce because they do not play a direct and necessary role in interstate commerce. Second, the court held that the arbitrator decides challenges to the validity of arbitrability when the challenge could also, if successful, attack the validity of the entire contract. The Fifth Circuit used incorrect reasoning, overemphasizing the crossing of …

No Need To Reinvent The Wheel: The Positive Relationship Between Green Technology And Patient Enforcement, Addison S. Fowler

Villanova Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Caroline E. Foster, Global Regulatory Standards In Environmental And Health Disputes: Regulatory Coherence, Due Regard, And Due Diligence, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

With ‘The Rise of the Regulatory State’ 1 at the beginning of the twentieth century, regulation replaced litigation as the main method of social control in the United States. Over the past few decades, more and more countries around the world started to follow the example of the United States, which led to the global expansion of the regulatory state. This in turn spurred more international disputes due to divergences in the respective regulatory standards. Theoretically speaking, global regulation might be the best solution. However, so far this not happened, partly due to the paralysis of the law-making functions of …

Law Students Can Use Portfolios To Plan Their Practice Systems, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post describes how law schools can help students plan for successful careers by using Real Practice System self-assessments to guide them in developing individualized portfolios. Portfolios identify students’ learning objectives and experiences designed to achieve them. Portfolios may include a variety of elements such as writing samples, video recordings, grades, faculty evaluations, clinical course journals, and extracurricular experiences.

Increasing Housing Stability Through State-Funded Community Mediation Delivered By The Massachusetts Housing Mediation Program (Hmp) Fy2023 Evaluation Report, Madhawa Palihapitiya, Karina Zeferino

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Publications

The Massachusetts Housing Mediation Program (HMP) is a comprehensive statewide program that provides free housing mediation services as a tool to increase housing stability with the intention of preventing homelessness created by landlord-tenant disputes. It is administered by the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) at the University of Massachusetts Boston and deploys the community mediation system infrastructure with 11 Community Mediation Centers (Centers) participating and serving all 14 counties of the Commonwealth to provide free conflict resolution services for tenants and landlords/property managers with housing disputes at any stage, from the earliest point a problem occurs, up to, and …

Helping Law Students Define And Pursue Success, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post collects prior posts about how to help law students define and pursue professional success.

Real Lawyering Practice Systems, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

Most of the pieces in the RPS Project have focused on mediation. The theory is not limited to mediation, and this post applies it to lawyering.

All Things Adr, Kukin Program For Conflict Resolution

Flyers 2023-2024

No abstract provided.

Technology In Real Practice Systems, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post uses the RPS mediation checklists to illustrate practitioners’ great reliance on technology.

The Acquisition Of Twitter: The Legal Interplay Between Elon Musk, Shareholders, Employees, And The Government, Florence Shu-Blankson

University of Miami Business Law Review

This article examines the acquisition process of Twitter by Elon Musk. It will analyze the legal validity of Musk’s initial claims for rescinding his offer, as well as Twitter’s defense arguments. It will consider questions such as: Did Twitter cause a material adverse effect to its operations that would be a basis for Musk to avoid the deal? Did Musk run afoul of any regulatory requirements under the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations? What impact did the ultimate sale of Twitter have on other stakeholders, such as corporate executives and non-executives, shareholders, employees. The …

Shareholder Primacy Versus Shareholder Accountability, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

When corporations inflict injuries in the course of business, shareholders wielding environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) principles can, and now sometimes do, intervene to correct the matter. In the emerging fact pattern, corporate social accountability expands out of its historic collectivized frame to become an internal subject matter—a corporate governance topic. As a result, shareholder accountability surfaces as a policy question for the first time. The Big Three index fund managers, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, responded to the accountability question with ESG activism. In so doing, they defected against corporate legal theory’s central tenet, shareholder primacy. Shareholder primacy builds …

Public Primacy In Corporate Law, Dorothy S. Lund

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores the malleability of agency theory by showing that it could be used to justify a “public primacy” standard for corporate law that would direct fiduciaries to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of the public. Employing agency theory to describe the relationship between corporate management and the broader public sheds light on aspects of firm behavior, as well as the nature of state contracting with corporations. It also provides a lodestar for a possible future evolution of corporate law and governance: minimize the agency costs created by the divergence of interests between management and …

Corporate Law In The Global South: Heterodox Stakeholderism, Mariana Pargendler

Seattle University Law Review

How do the corporate laws of Global South jurisdictions differ from their Global North counterparts? Prevailing stereotypes depict the corporate laws of developing countries as either antiquated or plagued by problems of enforcement and misfit despite formal convergence. This Article offers a different view by showing how Global South jurisdictions have pioneered heterodox stakeholder approaches in corporate law, such as the erosion of limited liability for purposes of stakeholder protection in Brazil and India, the adoption of mandatory corporate social responsibility in Indonesia and India, and the large-scale program of Black corporate ownership and empowerment in South Africa, among many …

Robo-Voting: Does Delegated Proxy Voting Pose A Challenge For Shareholder Democracy?, John Matsusaka, Chong Shu

Seattle University Law Review

Robo-voting is the practice by an investment fund of mechanically voting in corporate elections according to the advice of its proxy advisor— in effect fully delegating its voting decision to its advisor. We examined over 65 million votes cast during the period 2008–2021 by 14,582 mutual funds to describe and quantify the prevalence of robo-voting. Overall, 33% of mutual funds robo-voted in 2021: 22% with ISS, 4% with Glass Lewis, and six percent with the recommendations of the issuer’s management. The fraction of funds that robo-voted increased until around 2013 and then stabilized at the current level. Despite the sizable …

The Esg Information System, Stavros Gadinis, Amelia Miazad

Seattle University Law Review

The mounting focus on ESG has forced internal corporate decision-making into the spotlight. Investors are eager to support companies in innovative “green” technologies and scrutinize companies’ transition plans. Activists are targeting boards whose decisions appear too timid or insufficiently explained. Consumers and employees are incorporating companies sustainability credentials in their purchasing and employment decisions. These actors are asking companies for better information, higher quality reports, and granular data. In response, companies are producing lengthy sustainability reports, adopting ambitious purpose statements, and touting their sustainability credentials. Understandably, concerns about greenwashing and accountability abound, and policymakers are preparing for action.

In this …

Stakeholder Governance On The Ground (And In The Sky), Stephen Johnson, Frank Partnoy

Seattle University Law Review

Professor Frank Partnoy: This is a marvelous gathering, and it is all due to Chuck O’Kelley and the special gentleness, openness, and creativity that he brings to this symposium. For more than a decade, he has been open to new and creative ways to discuss important issues surrounding business law and Adolf Berle’s legacy. We also are grateful to Dorothy Lund for co-organizing this gathering.

In introducing Stephen Johnson, I am reminded of a previous Berle, where Chuck allowed me some time to present the initial thoughts that led to my book, WAIT: The Art and Science of Delay. Part …

Stakeholder Capitalism’S Greatest Challenge: Reshaping A Public Consensus To Govern A Global Economy, Leo E. Strine Jr., Michael Klain

Seattle University Law Review

The Berle XIV: Developing a 21st Century Corporate Governance Model Conference asks whether there is a viable 21st Century Stakeholder Governance model. In our conference keynote article, we argue that to answer that question yes requires restoring—to use Berle’s term—a “public consensus” throughout the global economy in favor of the balanced model of New Deal capitalism, within which corporations could operate in a way good for all their stakeholders and society, that Berle himself supported.

The world now faces problems caused in large part by the enormous international power of corporations and the institutional investors who dominate their governance. These …

Delegated Corporate Voting And The Deliberative Franchise, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

Starting in the 1930s with the earliest version of the proxy rules, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has gradually increased the proportion of “instructed” votes on the shareholder’s proxy card until, for the first time in 2022, it required a fully instructed proxy card. This evolution effectively shifted the exercise of the shareholder’s vote from the shareholders’ meeting to the vote delegation that occurs when the share-holder fills out the proxy card. The point in the electoral process when the binding voting choice is communicated is now the execution of the proxy card (assuming the shareholder completes the card …

A Different Approach To Agency Theory And Implications For Esg, Jonathan Bonham, Amoray Riggs-Cragun

Seattle University Law Review

In conventional agency theory, the agent is modeled as exerting unobservable “effort” that influences the distribution over outcomes the principal cares about. Recent papers instead allow the agent to choose the entire distribution, an assumption that better describes the extensive and flexible control that CEOs have over firm outcomes. Under this assumption, the optimal contract rewards the agent directly for outcomes the principal cares about, rather than for what those outcomes reveal about the agent’s effort. This article briefly summarizes this new agency model and discusses its implications for contracting on ESG activities.