Talk:Arbitration in the United States/Archives/2013

New link

I propose this new link: Title 9, "Arbitration," of the United States Code. Canon Law Junkie §§§ Talk 14:46, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I propose another arbitration organization link: "United States Arbitration Association". On virtually every wiki arbitration article, there are links to American Arbitration Association, and little mention of other industry choices. There are several other national organizations that should also be represented.

Untitled

I think we tried to change this at the same time. Sorry.  :(

Oh, I thought you had just overlooked it! Sorry! --LMS

Glad you seem to have lots of patience! : ) F. Lee Horn

Arbitration Outside the United States

This article exclusively deals with legal arbitration in the United States, completely missing the fact that countless other nations have such a system. It goes into great detail about the nuances of American legal arbitration, but barely even mentions its use in other countries. Now that's not very encyclopedic...

Well, it's up to the lawyers in those countries to research their law and summarize it on Wikipedia, if any of them have the energy, inclination, or time. I suppose an American law student with free LexisNexis access could look up a huge amount of Commonwealth arbitration law through Lexis. Unfortunately, I already graduated, so I'm no longer in that category. --Coolcaesar 02:48, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

A lot of the article, including the large section on arbitration in the US, would actually apply equally to English law and many Commonwealth jurisdictions, but it becomes a mammoth task to edit it once there is detailed reference to US statutes and practice, rather than general principles. With any legal topic there is an issue about how Wikipedia covers the law of 200+ jurisdictions in the world. Contributors are unlikely to know the law in all of them but we can be aware that each other exist and try to be as general as possible, or to state explicitly the jurisdiction we are talking about - for example common law jurisdictions. Chris R 07:47, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

International Arbitration is, financially, probably more important than all domestic arbitrations put together. Completing the article on this subject should be the priority...

Yeah, but comprehensive resources on international arbitration are the kind of thing that's available only on LexisNexis (which is very expensive) or at a very small number of elite law libraries (which are hard to gain physical access to). Again, if you really care about it that much, the burden is on you to research it. --Coolcaesar 01:55, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

First, note that the two subjects are not separate -- international arbitration is practiced in national contexts. Here its practice is discussed with regard to the U.S. contexts. The goal should I think be to add more contexts to make it less U.S.-specific, not to remove the national dimension: that would be impossible.

Second, though, this isn't really a Lexis-Nexis-exclusive thing. Kluwer is the big int'l commercial arb. publisher so, for instance, http://www.kluwerarbitration.com will get most of what one wants here. Still, that doesn't get it done, and I don't have time either right now ... agreed that it would be nice to do, though. Maybe when less busy. AnotherBDA 10:10, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Article removed from Wikipedia:Good articles

This article was formerly listed as a good article, but was removed from the listing because the article is extremely US-centric at the moment, and the lead should be expanded to give more of an idea of what the article is about, because it's quite vague at the moment. Worldtraveller 00:33, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

It would do a lot of violence to the article to expand it to refer to arbitration internationally (which would have to include not only arbitration in other countries, but also public international law arbitration of the sort the Permanent Court of Arbitration does). It seems to me that the best way forward would be to simply move this article to Arbitration in the United States, and place a stub at Arbitration as a filler. US Arbitration is what this article is about, anyway, so the move would arguably only have the effect of giving the article a title that better describes its contents. Plus because this article is at the moment actually very good, it makes folks a bit reluctant to leap in and change it to include arbitration in other jurisdictions, so the move is likely to improve the quality of the article's contents. I'll wait a few days, and if no-one has major problems with it, I'll go ahead and make the change. -- Arvind 21:46, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Looking for a reference for the following

Hi all. Saw this in the article "Arbitrators are not bound by precedent". I was wondering if anyone can point me towards something that says this is the case, preferably in the UK --203.59.112.98 16:41, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The comment might be slightly overstated. In most countries arbitrators have a huge amount of discretion in relation to conduct and procedure (in the UK, see section 34 of the Arbitration Act 1996), and the fact that a similarly constituted tribunal or another tribunal has (for example) ruled certain evidence inadmissible, or provided that a certain type of evidence could only be given by a single agreed expert, does not bind any future tribunal as to how they conduct their hearings (even hearings between the same parties).

But it would not be correct to say that arbitration tribunals are not bound by legal precedents and judicial decisions - they still need to follow the law in the making of their awards - they can't just determine cases by their own unique sense of fairness! If they did, then they would leave the award open to an appeal on a point of law (in the UK, see section 69 of the AA96). Legis 17:20, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Legis. Arbitrators are bound by legal precedent. This is my first visit to this page, and on first read I thought that the article gave the impression that arbitration was almost a type of ADR. In the UK it certainly isn't, and many arbitrations are far more formal than the Courts - a cynic might say that arbitrators who are scared of challenges to the courts, together with lawyers on hourly rates have no reason to cut through procedure like the judges are doing. There is no real focus on of the international chambers - such as the ICC, UNCITRAL etc - which is a must have in an article such as this. Have no time now but hope to be back! --BramleyBarn 15:30, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

That's because this article as it stands covers only US arbitration, which is an entirely different animal, what with their non-neutral arbitrators and all. In my opinion, we should simply move this article to Arbitration in the United States and start from scratch on an article that covers arbitration more generally, including its various types (public international law arbitration, international commercial arbitration, etc.), its history, its legal framework, and so on. Also, I assume you were talking loosely, but UNCITRAL isn't an arbitral institution or arbitral chamber. -- Arvind 15:55, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

You're right - my sloppiness! Both are 'rules' of arbitration that can be applied to ad-hoc arbitrations, but only ICC is an organisation that enforces its rules, appoints arbitrators etc. --BramleyBarn 17:00, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, in the United States, arbitration law is taught in alternative dispute resolution courses. Also, many (if not most) American arbitrations are less formal than the courts, in that the arbitrator wears a business suit like the lawyers, and sits at a conference table rather than on a raised platform, and is not bound by all the complexity of court rules. Although it's true that some of our arbitration systems are notorious for being non-neutral (the American Arbitration Association comes to mind), we do have some arbitration systems like JAMS (formerly known as the Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Service) which have a strong reputation for neutrality. But I agree that with such a strong difference in the meaning of the term "arbitration," perhaps the article needs to be split.--Coolcaesar 16:27, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Getting back to the original question (as far as U.S. law is concerned): It depends, to an extent, what you mean by precedent. The U.S. Supreme Court held in W. R. Grace & Co. v. Local 759, International Union of Rubber Workers, 461 U.S. 757 (1983), that a labor arbitrator was not necessarily bound by prior decisions of other arbitrators interpreting the same contract language under the same collective bargaining agreement; as the court put it, the scope of the arbitrator's authority and the precedential value of arbitration decisions are issues of contract interpretation for the arbitrator to decide. If the parties were to specifically incorporate an arbitrator's decision in a subsequent agreement that might make it binding, but otherwise it is fair game in any subsequent arbitration. As a practical matter, however, many arbitrators will give great weight to an earlier arbitrator's decision, even one they think is wrong.

As for following precedents in the sense of following either statutes or court or agency decisions, the law is less clear. California, for example, will not overturn an award even for manifest errors of law. While it may be possible to overturn an award if it contravenes public policy, in the field of labor arbitration the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the conflict must be direct and the public policy must be "well-defined and dominant," i.e., spelled out with some specificity in the statute, rather than the court's own view of what public policy should be. United Paperworkers International Union v. Misco, Inc., 484 U.S. 29 (1987) (state and federal laws criminalizing use of marijuana did not bar reinstatement of worker who used marijuana); Eastern Associated Coal Corp. v. Mine Workers District 17, 531 U.S. 57 (2000) (federal statute requiring drug testing of truck drivers did not bar reinstatement of driver who failed test).

In addition, to the extent that the arbitrator is interpreting a contract, rather than ruling on a claim governed by statutory or common law, the role of external law is debatable: some arbitrators believe that they have no obligation to look beyond the contract in deciding the issue submitted to them unless the parties expressly authorize them to do so.

Finally, I agree that this article is highly US-centric and should be renamed or moved. Italo Svevo 19:58, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Is there a certain am't of time that an arbitrator has before rendering a decision?

We have been waiting since Nov 05 for the Arbitrators decision, of which he said would be within a few weeks. Our Laywer is not answering our calls and we would like to find out if the decision was made and if not yet then is there a limited amount of time that the Arbitrator has before rendering a decision. Would think that there must be a mximum am't of time he has to make the decision?

Depends on the rules that were specified in the original arbitration clause or on the rules supplied by the arbitration service that provided the arbitrator. If there's nothing compelling the arbitrator to file a decision in a reasonable amount of time, you're probably in big trouble. --Coolcaesar 01:06, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

But for future reference, you should not use Wikipedia talk pages as a means of requesting free legal advice. Legis 09:45, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Move and stub

Since everyone seemed to agree that the article should be moved to Arbitration in the United States of America, I decided to go ahead and do that. I've placed a stub here for now, which it would be great if we could work on from a more international perspective. -- Arvind 10:12, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Adhesion contracts are not exempt from arbitration

I deleted the sentence that said that the Uniform Arbitration Act exempts insurance and adhesion contracts, because the UAA says no such thing. This is the citation that was provided, and, the section that the deleted sentence appears to be referring to seems to imply that the article is directly quoting, word for word, from the exact text of the Uniform Arbitration Act. However, as I look here, this alleged quote is nowhere to be found in the entire statute. Furthermore, look at the two sources. Once is some website called forc.org. That is not a reliable source, at all. What are this website's credentials, and why should we give two pieces of crap about them? However, the exact text of the Uniform Arbitration Act that I provided is from the website of the University of Pennsylvania. That is a much more reliable source than "forc.org." Honestly, are we going to start citing spoon.org next? What about chopsticks.org?Wikieditor1988 (talk) 02:45, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

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NPOV Problems/Recent Supreme Court decisions

This article is really in need of attention from an expert. Some parts read like an anti-arbitration polemic; others are outdated in light of recent US Supreme Court decisions confirming the strong presumption in favor of upholding an agreement to arbitrate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.24.83.108 (talk) 16:39, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

I am removing the tag because no discussion followed. Thincat (talk) 23:32, 18 September 2013 (UTC)