The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned a district court’s order vacating an arbitral panel’s award in a legal fees dispute.

Assistant Professor of Law Kristen Blankley, University of Nebraska College of Law, has published a thoughtful paper entitled, “A Uniform Theory of Federal Court Jurisdiction Under the Federal Arbitration Act,” George Mason Law Review, Forthcoming.

In Part Nine, we discussed the rap on special masters – the concern that special masters can be expensive and potentially ineffective; prone to an alternative agenda; and chosen because of connections to the judge. We suggested that the fact that at least the federal rules include no regularized method of selection or apparent qualification for the job of special master does not help to beat that rap. So what would help?

Like any new service or product, people started to alter the process of mediation in the adversarial system to meet their objectives. Litigators needed to find out quickly if appropriate resources (money) were available for their case. In order to learn if the process of mediation would be fruitful, litigators encouraged the mediators to bypass the basic essence of what drew the idealists to the field in the first place, self-determination and empowerment through communication.