Remember when Maria sang “Let’s start at the very beginning, it’s a very good place to start”?  Well, that seems to be what federal circuit courts are doing with their arbitration decisions recently.  This post will run through some Do Re Mis of arbitration law, as articulated by those decisions (and will close with some

This is my 290th post at ArbitrationNation and today I celebrate six years of blogging.  Woo hoo — that’s longer than most celebrity marriages!  In honor of the occasion, here are updates on six of the hottest issues in arbitration law so far this year.

  1. Agency regulation of arbitration agreements.  On the one hand, the

Now that Justice Gorsuch is confirmed and can take the open seat on the Supreme Court, maybe SCOTUS can move forward on the cases about whether employers can make employees waive their right to class actions in an arbitration agreement.  (Btw, here’s a nice SCOTUSblog piece on Gorsuch’s arbitration decisions.)  In the meantime, California’s

Just under the wire, SCOTUS released an arbitration opinion today, ensuring that 2015 would continue the string of years with cases interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act.  In DIRECTV v. Imburgia, the Supreme Court found that California’s interpretation of an arbitration clause was preempted by the FAA.  DIRECTV is a 6-3 decision, with Justice Kagan

The U.S. Supreme Court has been knocking out blockbuster arbitration opinions annually in recent years.  2010?  Stolt-Nielsen and Rent-a-Center.  2011?  Concepcion.  2012? CompuCredit (Okay, that does not qualify as a blockbuster.) 2013? AmEx and Sutter.  At this point, SCOTUS has accepted roughly half of the cases it will hear this year, and