I am pleased to report that the current issue of JELS (8:1, Mar. 2011) is available online and, once again, on time. JELS Editor Ted Eisenberg's comments on two arbitration papers (one in JELS and another in JLS) follow.
"Two new empirical articles on arbitration provide some potentially troubling results. In An Empirical Study of Employment Arbitration: Case Outcomes and Processes, 8 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 1 (2011), Alexander Colvin analyzes thousand of arbitration outcomes and finds a low employee win rate (21.4 percent), finds strong evidence of a repeat player effect in which employee win rates and award amounts are significantly lower where the employer is involved in multiple arbitration cases, and finds evidence of a significant repeat-employer-arbitrator pairing effect that is adverse to employees.
In Punitive Damages in Securities Arbitration: An Empirical Study, 39 Journal of Legal Studies 497, 518 (tbl. 4) (2010), Stephen J. Choi and I report a decline in investor success in securities arbitrations. Investors received a positive award in 53 percent of arbitrations in 1992 but that figure declined to 32 percent in 2006."
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