Alan Kaplinsky and Mark Levin, Ballard Spahr attorneys writing on their CFPB Monitor blog, have offered their initial thoughts on the study of consumer understanding of arbitration agreements that my St. John’s colleagues and I recently posted.
My colleague Jeff Sovern has posted a full response at the Consumer Law & Policy Blog. I’ll just add that, in my view, Levin and Kaplinsky don’t actually address the core problem we address in our article–that citizens are being unwittingly and unwillingly forced to give up important (and constitutionally guaranteed) procedural rights. Their point–and it is the point arbitration advocates almost invariably make–is that arbitration can be better for consumers than litigation. That may very well be true, at least some of the time. (See my post on the benefits of limited consumer arbitration here.) But it doesn’t answer the right question.
