On Wednesday, March 1, at 12:45 PM (Eastern), Prof. Andrea Schneider (Cardozo) will deliver the 2023 Philip B. Blank Memorial Lecture on Attorney Ethics at Haub Law School (Pace). RSVP here to attend either in person or via Zoom.

The title of her talk is “The Conflict in Arbitrator Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Public Judges or Private Neutrals?, ” and this is the description:

The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) provides for the vacatur of an arbitral award, “where there was evident partiality or corruption in the arbitrators.” This standard is both short in words and clarity. While corruption is generally understood, the concept of partiality—let alone evident partiality—has been widely interpreted by courts. The last Supreme Court case on this subject is over 50 years old. Arbitrators could look to analogous state law-based guidelines for arbitrators and even ABA opinions interpreting Model Rules regarding judges’ social or close personal relationships with lawyers and parties.

Instead, this talk proposes that, rather than cobbling together appropriate guidance from analogous situations, the FAA itself should be amended to make the language clearer.