As recently as 1995, the Supreme Court observed, in First Options of Chicago v. Kaplan, that arbitration was a creature of contract: "[A] party who has not agreed to arbitrate will normally have a right to a court's decision about the merits of its dispute." Yet what constitutes an agreement to...
The third and final part of the morning-long Commercial Finance and Dispute Resolution Symposium at the recent ABA Business Law Section Annual Meeting was a discussion, among audience and experts, of some hypotheticals implicating the obligations of attorneys who negotiate dispute resolution clauses and who represent clients in ADR procedures. The...
The ABA Business Law Section has turned its back on the August Annual Meeting of the Association and is now convening its own Annual Meeting in Chicago a month later. It is a resounding success by any measure, but certainly from the perspective of the Business Law Section: Over 1,500...
Tom Stipanowich has posted a new article, "Managing Construction Conflict: Unfinished Revolution, Continuing Evolution," at the Pepperdine Law Library's Legal Studies Research Paper Series. Stipanowich is a trained architect, an experienced construction lawyer, and a very experienced construction arbitrator, and his article speaks authoritatively on the past 20 years of...
Andrew Olejnik of Jenner & Block and Olivier André of the CPR Institute have co-authored an article that appears in Bankruptcy Law Reporter on the growing use of ADR tools in bankruptcy. Dating the trend from a 2009 conference convened by the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review, the authors conclude...
Straus Institute Academic Director Thomas Stipanowich reports: The Straus Institute recently conducted two major surveys of dispute resolution professionals: a survey of experienced arbitrators with the cooperation of the College of Commercial Arbitrators, and a survey of experienced mediators with the cooperation of the International Academy of Mediators. These studies produced...
At a recent meeting of the Council of the ABA Dispute Resolution Section, R. Larson Frisby of the ABA Governmental Affairs Office gave a very useful summary of certain legislation currently before Congress that could have an impact on arbitration, mediation and other forms of ADR in the U.S. With...