Mandatory Arbitration Limits?

As I am finishing up the semester teaching dispute resolution and focusing on arbitration, we’ve been having lots of fun in class finding mandatory arbitration clauses in our life — credit cards, cell phones, apartment leases, etc. My favorite clause to teach is from Gateway Computers, which used to have a clause requiring arbitration under the International Chamber of Commerce rules. My guess is that some junior associate drafting the clause thought it would be great to go to Paris on a regular basis!

I point out in class that there have been proposals to limit mandatory arbitration, but that there is generally little expectation these would be passed by the Senate or House. This year, however, the news might be different with the Democrats taking over. As Vicky Pynchon has helpfully posted, there is now new contemplation that the bill could be passed. The bill, proposed by Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold last summer, provides:

Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007 – Declares that no predispute arbitration agreement shall be valid or enforceable if it requires arbitration of: (1) an employment, consumer, or franchise dispute, or (2) a dispute arising under any statute intended to protect civil rights or to regulate contracts or transactions between parties of unequal bargaining power.

Declares, further, that the validity or enforceability of an agreement to arbitrate shall be determined by a court, under federal law, rather than an arbitrator, irrespective of whether the party resisting arbitration challenges the arbitration agreement specifically or in conjunction with other terms of the contract containing such agreement.

Exempts arbitration provisions in collective bargaining agreements from this Act.

So . . . it will be interesting to watch how the new party in charge deals with issue of mandatory arbitration (and if we have to rewrite the arbitration chapters in our textbooks once again!).

Cross posted at Indisputably.

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Resigned Guantanamo Prosecutor Discusses Moral Crisis, Catholic Faith, and Conclusion That “We Had Abandoned Our American Values and Defiled Our Constitution”

In a recent interview with the BBC, former Guantanamo prosecutor Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld discusses how the conflict he perceived between his military duties and his religious beliefs (as well as his beliefs about the requirements of the United States Constitution) created what the BBC terms a “profound moral crisis,” one that eventually led to his resignation.  

I found it moving to hear another human being discuss his struggle with these issues of conscience so directly, forthrightly, and genuinely. If you want to hear Lt. Col. Vandeveld’s discuss these events in his own words, you can watch this video at the BBC website. The BBC article reports the events this way:

It was one case in particular, that of a young Afghan called Mohammed Jawad, which caused most concern.

Mr Jawad was accused of throwing a grenade at a US military vehicle.

Col Vandeveld says that in a locker he found indisputable evidence that Mr Jawad had been mistreated.

After Mr Jawad had tried to commit suicide by banging his head against a wall at Guantanamo, Col Vandeveld says that psychologists who assisted interrogators advised taking advantage of Mr Jawad’s vulnerability by subjecting him to specialist interrogation techniques known as “fear up”.

He was also placed, Col Vandeveld says, into what was known as the “frequent flyer” programme in which he was moved from cell to cell every few hours, with the aim of preventing him sleeping properly, and securing a confession.

A devout Catholic, Col Vandeveld found himself deeply troubled by what he discovered.

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What’s New in the Classroom: Webcasts and Writing Bees

One of my biggest challenges in teaching students to write has been figuring out how best to teach “the basics”: grammar, punctuation, citation, and other sentence-level editing skills.  Before this year, I always devoted several class periods to just those topics.  Because students tend to enter law school with very different ability levels, however, those classes did not seem as effective as I would have liked.  The students who needed little or no instruction about grammar and punctuation were invariably bored, and other students (many of whom have candidly admitted that they have not studied grammar in years, if ever) needed more than those few classes devoted to those topics.  So how does the instructor effectively teach to the entire class?  It is difficult, to say the least. 

To remedy the problem, I decided to move all of my instruction about grammar, punctuation, precision, conciseness, and citation out of the classroom and onto the web.  I find it difficult to teach writing without a visual, so I created PowerPoint presentations (or Word documents) with rules and examples, and I recorded short lectures over the top of the presentations or documents.  When I was finished, I had a series of audio-visual presentations that students could watch at times convenient for them.  If a student already understood how to identify and correct dangling modifiers, there was no need to watch the webcast about modifiers.  If, however, the student had never heard of a dangling modifier and needed to go over the examples more than once, the webcast was there for repeated viewings.    

I was concerned, however, that if I put the material on the web, students would simply ignore it, so I wanted some way to hold them responsible for learning the material.  Out of that concern came my second teaching innovation: the Writing Bee. 

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