The Critical Theory Legacy of Jean Sternlight’s Panacea or Corporate Tool
Chapter in Discussions in Dispute Resolution (Oxford Univ. Press, Forthcoming)
Loyola Law School, Los Angeles Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2019-12
8 Pages Posted: 11 Jul 2019
Date Written: July 7, 2019
Abstract
No one can deny the seminal role that Jean Sternlight’s Panacea or Corporate Tool?: Debunking the Supreme Court’s Preference for Binding Arbitration has played in helping to define a distinct strand of domestic arbitration law scholarship. While earlier works treated in this volume, such as that of Julius Henry Cohen or Soia Mentschikoff, had approached the subject through the lens of commercial arbitration, Panacea underscored the importance of a very different context in which domestic arbitration law was being both applied and formed: ‘mandatory binding arbitration,’ which is to say arbitration that takes place not between two commercial parties but between a commercial party and a consumer or employee. It did so by tackling a number of key issues with Professor Sternlight’s characteristic passion and acumen: The unfairness of enforcing arbitration clauses against the proverbial “little guy” or the comparative lack of procedural safeguards in arbitration as compared with litigation, to name a few.
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