The EU Directive on unfair contract terms in consumer contracts (97/13/EEC) as a minimum harmonisation directive left Member States free to set up more intensive measures to protect consumers. However, the Czech Republic, stopping at the minimum level, allowed aggressive traders to incorporate...

Arbitration providers, such as the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”) and JAMS, have promulgated due process protocols to regulate the fairness of consumer and employment arbitration agreements. A common criticism of these due process protocols, however, has been that they lack an...

This article examines the differing legal treatment of pre-dispute consumer arbitration agreements in the European Union and the United States. Under the E.U. Directive on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts (particularly as implemented in the United Kingdom), most such agreements are invalid. In...

Under both federal and state arbitration law, arbitrators are generally understood to have the authority to rule on their own jurisdiction in the first instance, including ruling on whether the parties have agreed to arbitrate. A party that asserts it has not agreed to arbitrate is entitled to...

This paper presents an arbitration version of the MythBusters television show. It employs a MythBusters-type approach - subjecting commonly held views to empirical testing - to examine several commonly held myths about arbitration. It finds: (1) the myth that the number of arbitration...

In this article, we consider whether arbitration clauses are likely to result in the extinction of the class action. In our view, the answer is no. We reach that conclusion for two main reasons. First, at least some parties that draft standard form contracts prefer class actions to class...

The future of arbitration depends not only on arbitration but also on its competitors—the public courts, including business courts. The creation of business courts incorporates some of the preferred characteristics of arbitration (in particular, expert decision making and expedited case...

Arbitration innumeracy, as I use the phrase here, is the “inability to deal comfortably with the fundamental notions of number and chance” in evaluating arbitration, particularly consumer and employment arbitration. This article discusses a number of examples of possible arbitration...

This paper examines the role of third-party funding (TPF) in international investment arbitration. This can take many shapes and forms but basically, the TPF funder is an investor in a monetary claim lodged before a court or arbitral tribunal. By involving a TPF funder, a claimant may attract...

Generally speaking, each individual jurisdiction has adopted its own approach concerning the rules on the determination of the governing law applicable in proceedings in international matters. In the international practice, arbitral panels usually distinguish four relatively autonomous areas...