The Politics of Arbitration

By Marc Alexander

We are accustomed to a host of hotbutton issues that are part of United States Supreme Court jurisprudence: right to life/women’s right to choose; freedom to bear arms/gun control; exploitation of natural resources/environmental control; tightened/relaxed immigration laws; limitations on the right to vote/one person-one vote. Those issues are politically charged, and the Justices’ opinions, like magnetic filings, are pulled to left and right poles on the Supreme Court. But arbitration? Yes, prosaic as the subject may seem, arbitration too creates a political fault line and contention among the Justices.

The legal/political fault line parallels an economic fault line that divides American businesses from their consumers and employees.

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