Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s output on arbitration caught the international imagination in the mid-1980s.

Inspired by its chief justice’s conviction that litigation costs and case backlogs were irredeemable, the Burger court and its successor Rehnquist panel rapidly shot away the protections from mandatory arbitration thought to have been given to small businesses (Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth Inc., 473 U.S. 614 (1985) (available at https://bit.ly/4cxzl6S), securities customers (Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express Inc., 490 U.S. 477 (1989) (available at https://bit.ly/3WJFZAk)) and employees (Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U.S. 20 (1991) (available at https://bit.ly/3AiXCza)).

It received praise for establishing the preemption and preeminence of the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act over state law (Southland Corp. v. Keating, 465 U.S. 1 (1984) (https://bit.ly/3Alxt2W) and Mastrobuono v. Shearson Lehman Hutton Inc., 514 U.S. 52 (1995) (available at https://bit.ly/46NHRfV)) and its refusal to allow apparent exclusive jurisdiction provisions in statutes to bar arbitration (Shearson/American Express v. McMahon, 482 U.S. 220 (1987) (available at https://bit.ly/3YMWnT4).