The University of Texas has received a $500 Million pledge from Moncrief Oil, but as the Chrolincle of Higher Education reports it, the gift is conditional on Moncrief prevailing in pending litigation over the ownership of a Russian gas field. The conditional gift raises a number of interesting questions. For example, Rob Recih of Stanford’s … Continue reading $500 Million Gift Pledge (… if I win this lawsuit…)
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Hall Street opinion in March 2008 made clear that the Court believes that the FAA does not provide a basis for parties to expand contractually the scope of judicial reviews of arbitral awards. But the Court specifically left open the possibility that state statutory or common law might provide a basis … Continue reading Has California Answered Hall Street’s Invitation Already?
I haven’t seen a copy of this year’s AALS Recruitment Bulletin, so I’m not sure how many law schools have specifically advertised that they are hiring in ADR this season. The University of Oregon School of Law is looking to add a tenure-track ADR faculty member this year. (The official ad appears at the end … Continue reading Hiring New ADR Faculty ?
The International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR Institute) has announced its Corporate Leadership prize for 2008, and it’s going to Microsoft and Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Counsel. The press release mentions Microsoft’s highly visible encounter with ADR in the context of the US v Microsoft antitrust litigation. I don’t have enough familiarity with … Continue reading CPR Prize to Microsoft
Of course, headline writers invariably overstate what the subsequent article actually says. The NYT Business Section ran an article by this title last week, and the headline-to-content mismatch is no more egregious than is probably typical for such articles. The newspaper article describes a soon-to-be published empirical study of settlement behavior, the conclusion of which, … Continue reading The New York Times: “Study Finds Settling is Better than Going to Trial”
Daniel Schwarcz of the University of Minnesota recently posted an article to SSRN entitled, “Toward a New Approach to Resolving Consumer Insurance Disputes.” Schwarcz’s background is entirely in Insurance Law, and he is a self-confessed newcomer to ADR. He asked that I post a link to his article, with the hopes that he’ll receive feedback … Continue reading ADR in Insurance Claims – Possible Lesson from the UK?
UC-Irvine is in the process of creating the first new public law school in California in several decades, and the formation of its faculty had been, for some time, the subject of considerable gossip within the legal academy. (If this doesn’t strike you as gossip-worthy, you obviously don’t spend your days inside the walls of … Continue reading UC-Irvine’s New Law Faculty
Christopher Annunnziata, who blogs at ckamediation.com recently wrote a post entitled, “Is Court-Referred Mediation Fair?” My first instinct on reading any articles on fairness in court-connected mediation is to place them in this context of Nancy Welsh’s work and about Carrie Menkel-Meadow’s work. Nancy and Carrie have, to my mind, provided awfully thorough treatment of … Continue reading Fairness in court-affiliated mediation
Lela Love and Stawart Sterk recently published an article, Leaving More than Money: Mediation Clauses in Estate Planning Documents, 65 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 539 (2008). The abstract of their article reads: When probate disputes arise, an increasing number of courts have been referring those disputes to mediation. Estate planners, however, have been less … Continue reading Mediation, Probate, and Estate Planning
I read recently that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has voted to permit pilot projects aimed at developing alternative ways of processing EEO complaints. I have not read the details of the draft regulation. As I understand it, the principal motivation for the regulation is to encourage creativity and flexibility in the handling of these … Continue reading Alternatives to Alternatives: The EEOC’s Next Experiments
