The California Supreme Court has issued an important decision on the availability of class arbitration: Sandquist v. Lebo Automotive, Inc. (2016) 1 Cal.5th 233.
Timothy Sandquist worked for Lebo Automotive, Inc., as a car salesman. On Sandquist's first day of employment, his manager gave him approximately 100 pages of forms to complete as a condition of his employment. Among those pages were three arbitration agreements.
Twelve years later, Sandquist sued Lebo individually and on behalf of others,...
In much of machine learning, data used for training and inference undergoes a preprocessing step, where multiple inputs (such as images) are scaled to the same dimensions and stacked into batches. This lets high-performance deep learning libraries like TensorFlow run the same computation graph across all the inputs in the batch in parallel. Batching exploits the SIMD capabilities of modern GPUs and multi-core CPUs to speed up execution. However, there are many problem domains where the size and structure...
This chapter surveys the existing empirical literature on international arbitration. It seeks to be thorough but does not claim to be comprehensive. The chapter focuses on quantitative rather than qualitative empirical studies, and covers studies both of international commercial arbitration and international investment arbitration. Part I describes empirical research on the use of arbitration to resolve transnational disputes — in particular, the extent to which parties use arbitration clauses...
Michael S. Pardo and Dennis Patterson (University of Alabama School of Law and European University Institute) has posted The Promise of Neuroscience for Law: 'Overclaiming' in Jurisprudence, Morality, and Economics (Patterson, Dennis, and Michael S. Pardo (eds.). Philosophical Foundations of Law and Neuroscience. Oxford University Press, 2016, 231-248) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Claims for the relevance and importance of neuroscience for law are stronger than ever. Notwithstanding persuasive...
Increasingly, clinicians and commentators have been calling for the establishment of special adjudicatory dispute resolution mechanisms to resolve intractable medical futility disputes. As a leading model to follow, policymakers both around the United States and around the world have been looking to the conflict resolution provisions in the 1999 Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA).
In this article, I provide a complete and thorough review of the purpose, history, and operation of TADA. I conclude...
This audience might be interested in reading an article that appeared in the December 2016 volume of the Journal of Empirical Studies entitled “Are Arbitrators Human?” Authored by a Ph.D. candidate in human development (Rebecca K. Helm, Cornell), a federal magistrate judge (Judge Andrew J. Wistrich, CD Cal.), and a law professor (Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Cornell), the article reports on empirical research indicating that “arbitrators perform about the same as judges in experiments designed...
Arbitrators are lead actors in global dispute resolution. They are to global dispute resolution what judges are to domestic dispute resolution. Despite its global significance, arbitral decision making is a black box. This Article is the first to use original experimental research to explore how international arbitrators decide cases. We find that arbitrators often make intuitive and impressionistic decisions, rather than fully deliberative decisions. We also find evidence that casts doubt on the conventional...
One in five individuals in society has or will have a mental illness at some point in his or her lifetime. Conflict resolution theory, however, largely assumes that all individuals operate within the range of behaviors considered mentally healthy. Evidence suggests that professionals who deal with conflict, however, may have to deal with individuals who have mental health problems more frequently than would be the statistical norm. Clearly then, new theories of practice and norms of mediator behavior...
New York Times Deal Book: With Competition Fierce, Even Elite Law Firms Resort to the Unusual, by Elizabeth Olson:
America’s law firms, even the most prominent, are mired in an era of noticeably modest growth and volatility in the industry, and 2017 promises to be no better.
Fierce competition is prompting firms to take unusual steps to bolster their profiles. Top firms are hiring groups of lawyers to expand specific practice areas, changing pay practices, jettisoning or demoting some partners...