Procedure, Substance, and Power: Collective Litigation and Arbitration of Employment Rights

Katherine V.W. Stone, Arjay and Frances Fearing Miller Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law has published Procedure, Substance, and Power: Collective Litigation and Arbitration of Employment Rights, 61 UCLA Law Review Discourse 164 (2013); UCLA School of Law, Law-Econ Research Paper No. 13-12.  In her article, Professor Stone discusses recent Supreme Court arbitration jurisprudence and its effect on collective consumer and employment disputes.

Here is the abstract:

In this contribution to the Symposium honoring Stephen Yeazell, the author explores the interaction between group litigation and social context in the contemporary setting. She traces recent developments in the law of class action waivers coupled with mandatory individual arbitration clauses in consumer and employment contracts. She shows how the Supreme Court’s decisions in AT&T v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors enable large corporations that impose class action bans on consumers and employees to achieve de facto immunity from decades of hard-won protective legislation. She concludes that Yeazell’s insight — that the availability of group litigation is intricately linked with a society’s social arrangements — is as true today as it was when he first examined the issue in the 1970s.

This and other publications written by Professor Stone may be downloaded without charge from the Social Science Research Network.