Collective Arbitration (by Stacie I. Strong)

It is my pleasure to announce the publication of two works of Professor Stacie I. Strong, Associate Professor of Law, Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution, University of Missouri.

 Class, Mass, and Collective Arbitration in National and International Law, has just been published by Oxford University Press.  The book considers class, mass and collective arbitration as a matter of domestic and international law, providing arbitrators, advocates and scholars with the tools they need to evaluate these sorts of procedural mechanisms. The discussion covers the best-known decisions in the field – Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds International Corp. and AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion from the U.S. Supreme Court as well as Abaclat v. Argentine Republic from the world of investment arbitration – while also considering specialized rules on large-scale arbitration promulgated by the American Arbitration Association (AAA), JAMS and the German Institution of Arbitration (DIS). The text introduces dozens of previously undiscussed judicial opinions and covers issues ranging from contractual (or treaty-based) silence and waiver to regulatory concerns and matters of enforcement. The entire timeline of class, mass and collective arbitration is covered, beginning with the devices’ historical origins and continuing through the present and into the future. Lawyers in a wide variety of jurisdictions will benefit from the material contained in this text, which is the first full-length monograph to address large-scale arbitration as a matter of national and international law.

 The second work is an article entitled Collective Consumer Arbitration in Spain:  A Civil Law Response to U.S.-Style Class Arbitration, published in 30 Journal of International Arbitration 495 (2013).  Prof. Strong analyses the Spanish approach, which establishes a statutory form of large-scale arbitration that arises in the post-dispute context. According to the author, because this mechanism is built largely on express rather than implied consent, it could act as a model for reformers in other jurisdictions.  In particular, it could provide an answer to the various problems that are anticipated to develop in the United States following the recent Supreme Court decisions in Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter and American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurants.