ADR Prof Blog

Late last week the Supreme Court unanimously decided U.S. v. Davila, the full decision is here.  This is not a ground-breaking case, and the holding is not a surprise. Yet it is the bigger question about how our criminal justice system routinely works that is embedded into this case, although not confronted or even explicitly [...]

In May, the Third Circuit heard oral arguments in Delaware Coalition for Open Government v. Stine, the case challenging the constitutionality of Delaware’s chancery arbitration scheme (see my previous commentary on the program here, here, and here.) A federal court had found the scheme unconstitutional on grounds that it violated the public’s First Amendment right [...]

CALL FOR PAPERS ADR and the Regulatory State Sponsored by the AALS Section on Alternative Dispute Resolution 2014 AALS Annual Meeting • January 2-5, 2014 • New York City Private dispute resolution and agency decision-making are now prominent and permanent features of our legal landscape, either as substitutes for or alternatives to formal adjudication. In [...]

Today, the Supreme Court in Oxford Health Plans v. Sutter, http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/oxford-health-plans-llc-v-sutter/, affirmed its commitment to narrow judicial review of arbitration decisions. In Sutter, the arbitrator interpreted an arbitration agreement to permit class arbitration. Because the parties asked the arbitrator to interpret the agreement, the only question for a court, according to the Supreme Court, is [...]

At the Law&Society annual conference this past weekend, I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel with Nancy Welsh (Penn State), Cynthia Alkon (Texas Wesleyan), Danya Reda (NYU), Amy Cohen (Ohio State), and Hiro Aragaki (Loyola LA) — along with honorary panelists and commenters extraordinaire Art Hinshaw (ASU) and Kelly Browe Olson (Arkansas). The [...]