Yesterday I taught my final class of the semester in my Mediation & Arbitration course. I have been teaching this class, or a version of it, six years in a row. Each year, I ask students to find and bring in to class a pre-dispute arbitration clause in a consumer or employment agreement to which … Continue reading The decline of unconscionable arbitration clause provisions?
This was the email subject line from a former student who sent me a link to the recently released dissenting opinion (available here) in Sarei v. Rio Tinto — a case alleging human rights violations in the context of the Papua New Guinea civil war. There was no majority opinion, just an order referring the … Continue reading Mediating the French Revolution
Bishop Eddie Long is the pastor of an Atlanta megachurch and a prominent and controversial opponent of gay marriage. Earlier this fall, Long was accused by four young men of coercing them into sexual relationships with him. Their sexual misconduct lawsuit against him is scheduled to go to mediation in February, with a trial date … Continue reading Is Mediation an “End Run” Tantamount to Admission of Guilt? The Bishop Eddie Long Case
Last week’s Economist published an interesting article about a new book, American Grace, written by Professors Robert Putnam and David Campbell. According to the Economist, the book discusses religious unity in the United States and why religion does not tend to be a serious point of conflict within the United States despite the fact that we … Continue reading The Aunt Susan Theory
Proposals for the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association are due this week, on Wednesday, December 8, 2010. The meeting will be in San Francisco on June 2-5, 2011. For more information see: http://www.lawandsociety.org/ann_mtg/am11/call.htm
St. John’s is seeking participants for a conference on international employment dispute resolution next summer at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England. The conference is called “Worlds of Work: Employment Dispute Resolution Systems Across the Globe,” and will be held on July 20-23, 2011. It is hosted by our Center for Labor & Employment Law in conjunction with … Continue reading Call for Participation: Cambridge 2011
Last week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of FINRA arbitration to a customer of a broker-dealer on the grounds of waiver. In Louisiana Stadium Exposition District v. Merrill Lynch, 10-889-CV (Nov. 22, 2010), the Court affirmed a district court’s order denying a motion to compel arbitration on the grounds that the … Continue reading Second Circuit affirms denial of motion to compel FINRA arbitration on grounds of waiver
In an editorial today, the New York Times discussed the recently argued case before the US Supreme Court, AT&T v. Concepcion. We’ve had lots of commentary on the case on this blog (see Sternlight here , Cunningham here, and the Daily Labor Report here), and my prediction is that Concepcion wins because the California law in … Continue reading NYT weighs in on Concepcion
We commonly think this about our counterparts in conflicts. Unfortunately the statistics about mental illness in the USA are such that we may not be wrong. A study just released by the Substance and Mental Health Service Administration states that nearly 20% of adult Americans “experienced mental illness in the last year.” Of that number … Continue reading “But He is Crazy!”
Over on the Concurring Opinions blog Lawrence Cunningham from GW has been following the Supreme Court’s arbitration jurisprudence for some time. You can find his thorough analysis on the issues and arguments in AT&T v. Concepcion here. An excerpt is below. The principal theme of questioning probed how the Justices could tell if a state’s judges comply … Continue reading More on AT&T v. Concepcion
