Our wonderful colleague and fellow blogger, Jill Gross, has been named the James D. Hopkins Professor of Law at Pace Law School. She will be giving a lecture on November 12, 2014 at noon at Pace, entitled, “Setting the Record Straight: The Supreme Court and 21st Century Arbitration”.

We at the blog are very proud of Jill and wish her luck in giving what looks to be an outstanding lecture. Here is the synopsis of the lecture:

“The Supreme Court has decided more than two dozen cases under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) since 2000 – arising primarily from a commercial, consumer, employment, or securities dispute. Those decisions, particularly those interpreting FAA §2, have contributed to the Court’s modern arbitration jurisprudence that creates a strong national policy favoring arbitration, enforces agreements to arbitrate against virtually any defense, pushes many individual claims into arbitration against the will of one or more parties, and suppresses other claims, particularly those of small dollar value.

Yet, to the extent those decisions contain language describing one or more aspects of the process of arbitration, they describe the nineteenth, and perhaps twentieth century practice of arbitration; not the reality of twenty-first century arbitration. The Court’s uninformed and out-of-touch decisions have crafted a legal framework regulating an arbitration process that largely no longer exists in most commercial arbitration forums today.

This lecture will explore the dichotomy between the Supreme Court’s theoretical understanding of arbitration on which its current FAA jurisprudence is based and the actual twenty-first century practice of arbitration which that jurisprudence regulates. Professor Gross will demonstrate that the Court’s refusal to engage with and recognize the current practice of arbitration has fueled the Court’s misinterpretation of the FAA, negatively impacted disputants in arbitration and contributed to the widely held perception that arbitration is unfair.”

Congratulations, Jill — this honor is well-deserved.