Arbitration: Law, Practice & Politics (2407): Arbitration, once narrowly defined as a party-selected method for resolving contract-based disputes arising out of commercial transactions, is now ubiquitous. In the U.S. in addition to resolving run-of the-mill commercial disputes, arbitration may be used to resolve claims invoking anti-trust, securities, and civil rights law, and consumers, employees, patients and other individual claimants may be held to arbitration provisions included in form contracts drafted by corporations that the individuals overlooked or barely understood. Businesses too may find themselves held to an arbitration clause hastily chosen by a transactional lawyer who didn't understand what she was committing her client to. Economic globalization has created increased demand for international commercial arbitration, which offers binding resolution of trans-national business disputes, enforceable in virtually every court in the world. The increased frequency of complex high-value international transactions involving key industries -- e.g. energy and telecommunications -- has led to an increasing fraction of transnational business disputes with a significant public policy dimension. Moreover, the desires of countries with less developed economies to attract foreign direct investment has led to the creation of a specialized form of arbitration for disputes between private investors and states. Often bundled with other forms of alternative dispute resolution ("ADR") such as mediation, arbitration is actually a rule-defined adjudicative procedure, in which parties submit their disputes to privately-chosen and privately-paid decision-makers who deliver binding (and usually unappealable) outcomes, often in closed proceedings. The law that governs arbitration is a mix of domestic statutes (e.g., in the U.S., the Federal Arbitration Act) and international conventions (e.g., the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States ("ICSID")) that have been entered into by a large majority of countries. Today, arbitration offers a challenging and lucrative practice area to lawyers representing corporations in multiple industries, in domestic and international contexts, and to lawyers serving as arbitrators, who often command high hourly rates. Understanding the differences and similarities among arbitration law and practice in multiple domains and the intersection of public and private law is valuable to lawyers who specialize in arbitration. This seminar is intended for students who wish to develop this capacity as well as for students who want to understand better how to draft business contracts that will protect their clients should they find themselves subject to arbitration. Although arbitration is well-accepted around the world, certain applications of arbitration have become increasingly controversial. In the U.S. the requirement that employees agree to arbitrate sexual harassment claims as a condition of employment has led to boycotts against "big law" firms. Requirements to arbitrate disputes between private investors and national governments have knocked high-profile multi-lateral trade negotiations off-track. Some business decision-makers are turning away from arbitration for "ordinary" commercial disputes, arguing that it has become as expensive and time-consuming as court adjudication, without the protections of the latter. In this course we will consider separately and together, the statutes that provide the legal framework for arbitration, the specific rules that govern different types of arbitration, the ongoing controversies evoked by some of these rules and their application, and the reforms that have been proposed in response to these controversies. We will read and discuss U.S. case law, international arbitration decisions, academic commentary and empirical analyses of arbitration use and consequences, and hear from leading arbitration practitioners. Students will select aspects of arbitration law or practice or the controversies that surround it and write research papers on their topic of interest. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Class Participation, Final Paper. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available at https://law.stanford.edu/education/courses/consent-of-instructor-forms/. See Consent Application Form for instructions and submission deadline.