COMMERCIAL ARBITRATION: THEORY AND PRACTICE, THIRD EDITION 2014

Nicholas R. Weiskopf In the past few decades, the United States Supreme Court has led an extraordinary embrace of commercial arbitration as a favored form of alternative dispute resolution. First, using an extremely broad definition of "interstate commerce," it has extended the preemptive reach of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) and the underlying federal caselaw of arbitration, to the fullest possible constitutional limit so as to preempt state law attempts to regulate arbitral processes in any manner deemed at all hostile to federal policies. Second, operating under the FAA, the Court has ruled that so-called "public" statutory claims for discrimination, securities fraud, antitrust and RICO are covered by conventional pre-dispute agreements to arbitrate, even under contracts of adhesion. With this incredible growth of arbitration, on both the national and international levels, has come increased focus on whether and, if so, when, arbitrators may depart from specific rules of law t