The US Supreme Court denied certiorari this morning in Strine v. Delaware Coalition For Open Government, Inc., thereby upholding the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals decision declaring the Delaware Business Arbitration Program unconstitutional for failure to make the arbitration proceedings open to the public.  You may recall that Delaware had argued the Delaware Business Arbitration program “would effectively end” if the courts mandated public access to the proceedings.   It will be interesting to see if the Delaware Business Arbitration Program proceeds, but with public access to the arbitrations on the same basis as Delaware court proceedings.  That may tell us something about the extent to which attractiveness of such a program to the business community depends on confidentiality of the proceedings, the relative costs of the proceedings vis-à-vis other arbitral forums and/or the expertise of the arbitrators/judges.

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Issue: Whether Press-Enterprise Corp. v. Superior Court of California‘s “experience and logic” test requires invalidation on First Amendment grounds of a Delaware statute authorizing state judges to act as arbitrators in business disputes — when the parties voluntarily select arbitration — because the arbitration proceedings are not open to the public.

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Tags: Delaware Business Arbitration, Delaware Business Arbitration Program, Inc., Strine v. Delaware Coalition For Open Government