Collective Consumer Arbitration in Spain: A Civil Law Response to U.S.-Style Class Arbitration

Abstract

For years, the international legal community has debated the propriety of large-scale arbitration. Most of the analysis has focused on the pros and cons of class arbitration, based on the apparent assumption that any future forms of large-scale arbitration will follow the model initially developed by the United States in the 1980s. However, other types of group arbitration are also possible, as demonstrated by a unique form of collective consumer arbitration created by the Spanish legislature in 2008.

The Spanish approach to large-scale arbitral proceedings is intriguing in a variety of ways, not the least of which is its ability to overcome some of the obstacles to U.S.-style class arbitration that arise as a matter of European and national constitutional law. However, the Spanish model also reflects a number of areas of concern. This Article therefore takes an in-depth look at the Spanish statute on collective consumer arbitration to determine whether the procedure offers a realistic and widely applicable civil law response to U.S.-style class arbitration.

Keywords: consumer arbitration, class arbitration, collective arbitration, international commercial arbitration, ADR, comparative law, European law, Spanish law, consumer law, collective redress, group actions, European Union, civil law, arbitration, class action.