Arbitration Secrecy

Join the Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution (CNDR) at UC Law SF for a virtual academic workshop focused on alternative dispute resolution (ADR), featuring Professor Gary Spitko (Santa Clara) presenting his new work-in-progress, “Arbitration Secrecy.” Professor Jan Martinez (Stanford) will provide commentary. The workshop is open to the public, but participants are requested to read Professor Spitko’s paper beforehand (draft available after registration).

“Arbitration Secrecy” explores the relationship between the FAA and various state and federal infringements on arbitration secrecy. The analysis begins by considering the nature of arbitration and the place of secrecy in the hierarchy of arbitral values. The Article concludes that secrecy is neither a fundamental attribute of arbitration nor a mere incidental aspect of arbitration; rather, secrecy should be regarded as a secondary value of arbitration. This conclusion leads ineluctably to another: The Supreme Court’s all-or-nothing framework for evaluating a neutral regulation that impacts arbitration is unsuitable in the context of a challenge to a state or federal regulation that limits the right of an arbitral party to maintain arbitration secrecy. Thus, the Article proposes a more flexible framework that would apply an intermediate review to intrusions into arbitration secrecy, as well as to infringements of other secondary attributes of arbitration.  

Thursday, November 17, 2022, 12:30 – 1:30 pm PST, Via Zoom

RSVP Here

Questions to CNDR@uclawsf.edu

 Speaker:

Gary Spitko is a Visiting Professor of Law at UC Law SF during the Fall 2022 semester. He is the Presidential Professor of Ethics and the Common Good and a Professor of Law at Santa Clara University where he teaches courses in arbitration and mediation, as well as in wills & trusts, employment discrimination, and employment law.  

Commentator:

Janet Martinez

Janet Martinez is Director of the Gould Negotiation and Mediation Program, and Director of the Gould Alternative Dispute Resolution Research Initiative. Professor Martinez focuses her research and consulting on the lawyer’s role in negotiation, domestically and internationally; dispute system design; online dispute resolution; facilitation of public disputes, particularly in the fields of international trade and the environment; negotiation and consensus-building training; and negotiation curriculum development for clients in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 2002, she did research, writing, and teaching in various aspects of negotiation at Harvard University’s graduate schools of business, law, and government, and was previously senior counsel for the McKesson Corporation. With Amsler and Smith, her book Dispute System Design: Preventing, Managing and Resolving Conflict, was published by Stanford University Press, 2020.