Arbitrator Liability: Reconciling Arbitration and Mandatory Rules

In this Article, Professor Guzman resolves the tension that exists between mandatory legal rules and the widespread use of arbitration. In recent years, U. S. courts have expanded the range of enforceable arbitration agreements to include agreements that cover areas of law previously thought to be within the exclusive domain of courts. Among the disputes that are now deemed arbitrable are those that implicate mandatory rules such as securities and antitrust laws. Under current law, the willingness of courts to enforce arbitration agreements and to uphold the resulting arbitral awards with minimal judicial review makes it possible for the parties to a transaction to avoid mandatory rules of law. Until now, it has generally been believed that the legal system must either restrict the use of arbitration or permit arbitration and accept that doing so turns all mandatory rules into default rules. This Article proposes a mechanism that permits the continued use of arbitration without abandoning the mandatory nature of legal rules. The recommended approach, called arbitrator liability, allows the losing party in an arbitration to sue the arbitrator on the ground that a mandatory rule was ignored. Under existing legal rules, arbitrators have an incentive to ignore mandatory rules of law in favor of the contractual terms agreed to by the parties. Arbitrator liability gives arbitrators an incentive to apply mandatory rules of law. Giving proper incentives to arbitrators will ensure that mandatory rules are enforced, thereby eliminating the incentive for the parties to draft arbitration agreements intended to avoid those rules. The benefits of arbitration can be retained without sacrificing the ability of lawmakers to adopt mandatory rules

Exploratory Study on Selected Philippine Agricultural Commodity Import Statistics vis-Ã -vis Export Statistics of the Exporting Countries

Using the import data compiled by the Philippines and comparing these with data as reported by the exporting countries, this study aims to determine the disparity of the statistics from the two sources on the quantity and value of selected agricultural commodities for the years 2000 to 2005. The products covered by this study consist of wholly or semi-milled rice, maize (corn), live poultry, domestic fowls, ducks, geese, frozen meat of bovine animals, apples, oranges, onions and shallots, and garlic. The differences in statistics on the bilateral transactions─in terms of FOB values, quantities, and derived unit prices─are examined by using percentage differences, the implicit minimal measurement error (IMME), and the Wilcoxon Matched-Pair Signed-Ranks (Wilcoxon-MPSR) test. Results show that considerable discrepancies between import and export statistics do exist. The discrepancy may reflect both legitimate conceptual differences between Philippine imports and exports statistics of the exporting countries, as well as errors in reporting. The discrepancy is further substantiated by the results of the Wilcoxon-MPSR test, which show that these differences are significant.