Sotomayor’s Arbitration Jurisprudence

May 29th, 2009 · No Comments

Russ Bleemer at CPR just sent me a very interesting link regarding Judge and Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s arbitration jurisprudence. I’d taken a brief look at this myself and concluded that she seems to follow the general philosophy that enforcing arbitration agreements and awards is part of the national federal policy favoring arbitration. I did note, as did CPR, however, that she did not enforce a consumer arbitration agreement in January 2009 because the individual would not be able to vindicate his statutory rights except through a class action (prohibited by the arbitration clause). See In Re: American Express Merchants’ Litigation, Italian Colors Restaurant, 554 F.3d 300 (2d Cir. 2009).

In general, I saw nothing in her cases to suggest that she will vote on arbitration cases differently than has Justice Souter. The CPR link is:

http://www.cpradr.org/tabid/45/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/498/Default.aspx