Risk Taking

One of the reasons I feel so strongly about the value of the Stone Soup Project is that it inspires us to develop deeper understandings about how conflicts unfold.

With respect to whether the daughter was bound by the plain language of the arbitration agreement, the Court had no trouble concluding she was not.   The arbitration agreement specifically applied to claims made by authorized users of the account.  

Dispute resolution is defined broadly and includes dispute system design, conflict management, organizational decision-making, dispute prevention, and transactional negotiation, among other things.

n Wells Fargo Advisors, LLC v. Sappington, 2018 WL 1177230 (2d Cir. March 7, 2018), a putative class of former Wells Fargo employees brought suit for unpaid overtime (FLSA).

Since we started the Project about a year ago, we have engaged almost 1000 students in 40 classes covering 12 subjects, taught by 32 faculty from 25 schools in 3 countries.

The International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR) gave its award for outstanding professional article to our own Art Hinshaw as well as Stephanie Cohen and Mark Morril, and to Lynn Cohn for a short article.

Like many of you, we are thrilled to see a session added to the program about “living room conversations,” where Section of Dispute Resolution Chair Ben Davis will speak about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his assassination.  We agree with Ben about its importance and relevance, and we urge everyone to participate.

This project is designed to engage younger people in our field and the Section.  If you see them at the conference, please introduce yourself and make them feel welcome.  You will be able to recognize them as they will have special ribbons on their nametags

This post provides sample papers to give faculty ideas about what you might assign your classes in the future and provide papers you might suggest as models to your students.  You also might just enjoy reading them as stories.

Many colleagues wish they had students do these assignments earlier in the semester and discuss them in class.  Brian Farkas really did this.  He had his students interview arbitrators right after the first class and then discuss it in class soon afterward.  

I think that one of the best questions is about the problems that participants experience in their work.  This is a great question to ask at the beginning of a program because it can help presenters relate the material throughout the event to participants’ own experiences.  

In a fitting ending to a post about high courts,  our nation’s highest court has agreed to decide a new arbitration case.  The case, New Prime Inc. v . Oliveira, comes from the 1st Circuit and raises two questions: whether a court or arbitrator should decide if an exemption to the FAA applies; and whether the FAA’s exemption (in Section 1) includes independent contractors.