Law Review Article | Does Class Arbitration ‘Change the Nature’ of Arbitration? Stolt-Nielsen and First Principles

S.I Strong, Associate Professor of Law and Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution at the University of Missouri recently authored Does Class Arbitration ‘Change the Nature’ of Arbitration? Stolt-Nielsen and First Principles, Harvard Negotiation Law Review, Forthcoming; University of Missouri School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2011-07. In the article, Professor Strong discusses how class arbitration differs from other forms of multiparty arbitration.

Here is the Abstract:

In Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds International Corp., the United States Supreme Court stated that class arbitration “changes the nature of arbitration.” Certainly class proceedings do not resemble the traditional view of arbitration as a swift, simple and pragmatic bilateral procedure with few witnesses, documents or formalities, but do these types of large-scale disputes violate the fundamental nature of the arbitral procedure? This article answers that question by considering the jurisprudential nature of arbitration and determining whether and to what extent class arbitration fails to meet the standards necessary for a process to qualify as “arbitration.” During the course of the discussion, the article analyzes the ways in which class arbitration differs from other forms of multiparty arbitration and investigates whether a form of “quasi-arbitration” is in the process of developing as a means of responding to the demands of class proceedings.

The article may be downloaded here (without charge) from Social Science Research Network. Other papers by Professor Strong are available here.

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