The Mess of Manifest Disregard

This short essay offers a new and overlooked angle on a circuit split currently developing in the area of federal arbitration law. In the 12 months since the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial decision in Hall Street Associates v. Mattel, state and federal courts have taken opposite sides on the question of whether Hall Street spells the end of the half-century old, judicially-created doctrine of “manifest disregard,” which allows courts to refuse enforcement of arbitral awards in certain narrow circumstances. On March 5, 2009, the Fifth Circuit became the fourth federal appellate court to weigh in on this debate. I argue that both sides of the circuit split have uniformly misunderstood Hall Street