The Centrist Case for Enforcing Adhesive Arbitration Agreements

My latest article, The Centrist Case for Enforcing Adhesive Arbitration Agreements, was just published at 23 Harvard Negotiation Law Review 29 (2017)

The Abstract:

"The Politics of Arbitration Law and Centrist Proposals for Reform", 53 Harvard J. on Legislation 711 (2016), explained how issues surrounding consumer, and other adhesive,  arbitration agreements became divisive along predictable political lines (progressive vs. conservative) and proposed an intermediate (centrist) position to resolve those issues. However, "The Politics of Arbitration Law" did not argue the case for this centrist position. It left those arguments for two more articles: (1) "The Centrist Case against Current (Conservative) Arbitration Law", 68 Florida Law Review 1227 (2016), which argued against the overly-conservative parts of current arbitration law; and (2) this Article, which argues against progressive proposals to repeal, not only the overly-conservative parts of current arbitration law, but also the parts of current arbitration law that should be retained. While progressives would prohibit enforcement of individuals’ adhesive arbitration agreements, this Article argues that such agreements generally should be enforced.

Consumer Arbitration by Bruce Wardhaugh

Thoughtful new article, Unveiling Fairness for the Consumer: The Law, Economics and Justice of Expanded Arbitration, by Dr. Bruce Wardhaugh of Queen's University, Belfast.  I appreciate the extent to which he addresses my own articles, particularly Paying the Price of Process: Judicial Regulation of Consumer Arbitration Agreements. 

Bruce Wardhaugh writes "some argue that pre-dispute agreements in consumer (and employment) matters are consumer welfare enhancing: they decrease the costs of doing business, which is then passed on to the consumer. This Article examines these latter claims from both an economic and normative perspective. The economic analysis of these arguments shows that their assumptions do not hold. Rather than being productive of consumer surplus, the use of arbitration is likely to have the opposite effect. The industries from which the recent Supreme Court cases originated not only do not exhibit the industrial structure assumed by the proponents of expanded arbitration, but are also industries which exhibit features that facilitate consumer welfare reducing collusion."

 

The Effects of Gilmer: Empirical and Other Approaches to the Study of Employment Arbitration

The Effects of Gilmer: Empirical and Other Approaches to the Study of Employment Arbitration

An article by Christine Jolls, Accommodation Mandates, 53 Stanford Law Review 223 (2000), provides a framework for analyzing the effects of employment discrimination statutes. This article extends that framework to employment arbitration to describe the effects of enforcement of employees' pre-dispute arbitration agreements. The article also critically reviews empirical studies of these effects.