Category Archives: Arbitration

Bales & Gerano Paper: Oddball Arbitration

Richard A. Bales and Mark B. Gerano, both of Northern Kentucky have written Oddball Arbitration, 30 Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal (2013). Here's the abstract: Congress passed the FAA in 1925 to resolve commercial disputes involving merchants. Since then, the Supreme Court has dramatically expanded the scope of the FAA and applied it in […]

Automotive News Survey Finds Many Dealers Expect CFPB to Bar Use of Arbitration Clauses

Here.  An excerpt: * * * Nearly 40 percent of dealers responding to a recent unscientific Automotive News survey also expressed concern that they soon will lose  the arbitration option. "I think arbitration is on its last legs," said Tom Hudson, a partner in the  Hudson Cook law firm in Hanover, Md., who predicts the […]

Interesting Column by The Nation’s Rick Perlstein on Fine Print Contracts

Here.  And here's the beginning: Imagine you’ve clicked on your computer screen to accept a contract to purchase a good or service—a contract, you only realize later, that’s straight out of Kafka. The widget you’ve bought turns out to be a nightmare. You take to Yelp.com to complain about your experience—but lo, according to the […]

Two Conceptions of Concepcion

Arpan Sura and Robert A. DeRise, both of Arnold & Porter, have written Conceptualizing Concepcion: The Continuing Viability of Arbitration Regulations.  Here's the abstract: Section 2 of the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) provides that arbitration agreements “shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the […]

Nancy Welsh Paper on Arbitration and Incentivizing Procedural Safeguards

Nancy Welsh of Penn State has written Mandatory Predispute Consumer Arbitration, Structural Bias, and Incentivizing Procedural Safeguards, 42 Southwestern University Law Review 187 (2012).  She presented the paper at the AALS annual conference.  Here's the abstract: Within the past several decades, there has been an explosion in the creation, institutionalization and use of “alternative” dispute […]

Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments in Major Arbitration Case: American Express v. Italian Colors

by Deepak Gupta Along with the historic Voting Rights Act arguments this morning, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in American Express v. Italian Colors — a major antitrust arbitration case that we've mentioned on the blog several times over the years (e.g., here and here).  I've been serving as co-counsel for the plaintiffs/respondents in […]

Carolyn Dessin Paper: Arbitrability and Vulnerability

Carolyn Dessin of Akron has written Arbitrability and Vulnerability, 21 Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, 349 (2012).  Here's the abstract: Arbitration is cool. Everybody's doing it. In the eighty-five years since the passage of the Federal Arbitration Act, that seems to be the prevailing sentiment. Recent decades have seen the meteoric rise of […]

Today’s Recess Appointment News

by Deepak Gupta The Arbitration Wars Meet the Recess Appointment Wars: Since its beginning, this blog has closely covered controversies over mandatory arbitration in consumer and employment contracts. More recently, we've been covering the constitutional controversy over the President's recess appointments to the CFPB and NLRB. On Tuesday, those two worlds officially collided when lawyers […]

Bottomside Briefs in American Express Arbitration Case, Including Briefs of the U.S. Solicitor General and 22 States

by Deepak Gupta Since at least 2009, this blog has covered (e.g. here and here) the long-running saga of American Express v. Italian Colors, an antitrust dispute that raises fundamental questions about the limits of federal arbitration jurisprudence. The case, now before the Supreme Court, presents the question whether an arbitration clause should be enforced […]

Omri Ben-Shahar Paper Looks at Which Consumers Are Hurt Most by Arbitration Clauses

Omri Ben-Shahar of Chicago has written Arbitration and Access to Justice: Economic Analysis. Here is the abstract: Mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer contracts are widely regarded as problematic because they limit consumer’s access to judicial forums, to fair procedures, and potentially to any kind of remedy. But rather than looking at consumers as a group, […]