ArbitrationNation Roadmaps (primers)

Pick up any textbook or treatise on arbitration law, and you’ll find the same thing in the chapter on enforcing arbitral awards: courts cannot conduct a merits review of awards. Courts, in other words, do not second guess the conclusions of the arbitrators about law or facts.

Or at least they’re not supposed to do

Today’s post continues our series of arbitration refreshers, to combat the Summer Slide.  It was researched and written by Anne Marie Buethe from the University of Iowa Law School.

Despite clear grounds for authority, arbitrators remain wary of hearing and granting dispositive motions.* While arbitrators posit reasons for their reluctance—the risk of vacatur being

I am celebrating my fifth anniversary of blogging by publishing one listicle per day this week, and today is the last one (sniff, sniff). To recap: Monday’s topic was the five biggest surprises in arbitration law; Tuesday’s was the five states most hostile to arbitration; Wednesday’s was the five arbitration cases lawyers really ought to

What is “arbitration”? Although courts often use and apply the word, rarely do they stop to define it.  While the FAA concerns agreements to “settle by arbitration a controversy,” the FAA does not define “arbitration,” leaving the question to the courts. Lacking definitive guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court, two lines of cases have developed