Class, Mass and Collective Arbitration in National and International Law

Class arbitration first developed in the United States in the 1980s as a means of providing large numbers of individuals with the means of asserting their claims at the same time and in the same proceeding. In the thirty years since class arbitration was born, large-scale arbitration has spread beyond U.S. borders and is now seen in Europe as collective arbitration and in the international investment context as mass arbitration. This book considers all three proceedings – class, mass and collective arbitration – as a matter of domestic and international law, providing arbitrators, advocates and scholars with the tools they need to evaluate these sorts of procedural mechanisms. The discussion covers the best-known decisions in the field – Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds International Corp. and AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion from the U.S. Supreme Court as well as Abaclat v. Argentine Republic from the world of investment arbitration – while also considering specialized rules on large-scale arbitration promulgated by the American Arbitration Association (AAA), JAMS and the German Institution of Arbitration (DIS). The text introduces dozens of previously undiscussed judicial opinions and covers issues ranging from contractual (or treaty-based) silence and waiver to regulatory concerns and matters of enforcement. The entire timeline of class, mass and collective arbitration is covered, beginning with the devices’ historical origins and continuing through the present and into the future. Lawyers in a wide variety of jurisdictions will benefit from the material contained in this text, which is the first full-length monograph to address large-scale arbitration as a matter of national and international law. Following is a draft of chapter 4, which addresses the interpretation of the arbitration agreement. The published version of the book, Class, Mass and Collective Arbitration in National and International Law by S.I. Strong, will be available from Oxford University Press in the spring of 2013