The progression of arbitration law in the American legal system has been steadfast. Despite a few uneasy rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court (“SCOTUS” or “the Court”) has provided resolute support for arbitration and proclaimed the legitimacy of its enhanced adjudicatory role. The few rulings that strayed from the contemporary judicial evaluation of arbitration1) eventually were reconsidered and their impact on the law significantly lessened or entirely redefined. For example, the Rodriguez Court reversed Wilko v. Swan; Bernhardt Polygraphic was replaced with the Federalism Trilogy; Volt Information Sciences was recast as a contract freedom case; and Sutter virtually reversed Stolt-Nielsen.3) U.S. law provides that arbitral adjudication can apply to all civil disputes and, once chosen by the contracting parties, will yield binding determinations at a lower cost and more quickly than its judicial counterpart.
The Steelworkers Trilogy2) in 1960, along with the cases on international litigation and arbitration4) foreshadowed the Federalism Trilogy5).
