This article examines the fairness of mediation of customers' disputes with their securities brokers and their brokerage firms. After a brief description of the history of alternative dispute resolution of customer disputes in the securities industry, including the rise of mediation in the...

This article explores the birth. life and possible death of the securities arbitration clinic (SAC), a law school clinic in which students represent investors of modest means in arbitrable securities disputes with their broker-dealers. The article first describes the history of the SAC, how a...

This article examines the NASD's proposal to change its Code of Arbitration Procedure to require NASD arbitrators to write explained awards upon the customer's request. The article evaluates the pros and cons of the proposal, and the policy reasons why such a rule change might be desirable. The...

In the early part of this decade, the Supreme Court's decisions interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) strictly enforced pre-dispute arbitration clauses (PDAAs) with class action waivers and so-called “delegation” provisions in consumer contracts. Just after the Court's 2013 ruling...

In this essay, I examine recent Congressional efforts to ban pre-dispute arbitration clauses in securities brokerage account agreements and thus eliminate mandatory arbitration of customer-broker disputes. In the proposed Arbitration Fairness Act, Congress would ban such clauses in all consumer...

Arbitration in securities industry-sponsored forums is the primary mechanism to resolve disputes between investors and their brokerage firms. Because it is mandatory, participants debate its fairness, and Congress has introduced legislation to ban pre-dispute arbitration clauses in customer...

This article addresses an issue of securities arbitration that has largely gone unexamined: whether arbitrators have to apply the law in deciding customers' disputes with their brokers. Because of the Supreme Court's 1987 opinion in Shearson/American Express v. McMahon, most customers' disputes...

This article details the interdisciplinary collaboration that the authors conceived, designed and implemented between Pace Law School's Securities Arbitration Clinic and graduate students in Pace's Business School. The clinic provides free legal representation to small investors who have...