The Majority Approach to Arbitration Waiver: A Workable Test or A License for Litigants to Play Games with the Courts?

[Excerpt] “The freedom of parties to agree to arbitrate their disputes is enshrined by contract law and federal law. By inserting a mandatory arbitration clause in a contract, both parties agree that, should a dispute arise between them, they will not bring the matter to court. Instead, they agree to submit any disputes to a mutually-agreed-to third party, such as the American Arbitration Association; this third-party acts like a judge and resolves the dispute. Arbitration has many advantages, such as reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of dispute resolution. Because of these reduced costs and greater efficiency, businesses can pass along their savings to consumers by offering them lower prices and more value. Notwithstanding all of these advantages, the freedom of parties to insert enforceable arbitration clauses in their contracts has its fair share of detractors. Big businesses often insert such clauses in take-it-or-leave-it consumer contracts, such as credit card and cell phone agreements. Consumers who want or need the service provided by these businesses are forced to agree to mandatory arbitration clauses, which grant to both parties the legal right to insist upon arbitration as the sole dispute resolution method. While almost no one disagrees that arbitration is efficient and less costly, some argue that it is an unfair process. Since the business party usually appears before the third-party arbitrator repeatedly, whereas the consumer appears before him only once, the arbitrator may feel inclined to find in favor of the business party, its repeat customer. This debate between efficiency and the unfairness underlies any discussion about arbitration. This note will address this debate by analyzing merely one facet of arbitration: arbitration waiver. All of the circuits agree that when a party with a contractual right to arbitrate chooses to litigate a dispute, the party’s election to litigate may waive his ability to move the case out of court and into arbitration. However, they disagree about what test should be applied to decide whether a particular election to litigate constitutes arbitration waiver. The circuits have formulated primarily two different tests. In the majority of circuits, two elements must be proven: (1) the party seeking arbitration must have participated in litigation; and (2) the party resisting arbitration must show that he will suffer prejudice. A minority of circuits keep the first element, but the prejudice requirement has been eliminated.

Growth and claw regeneration of the stone crab, Menippe mercenaria

Savage, T. and J.R. Sullivan. 1978. Growth and Claw Regeneration of the Stone Crab, Menippe mercenaria. Fla. Mar. Res. Publ. No. 32.23 pp. Laboratory-maintained and feral crabs were observed for incremental carapace width and major and minor claw growth. Morphometric relationships for male and female carapace width against length and carapace width against major and minor claw sizes were derived. Only slopes of carapace width us. female major and male minor claws were not significantly different at the 95% confidence level. Feral normal male incremental growth exceeded that of normal females for all parameters. Normal laboratory females possessed greater average carapace width growth but less claw growth than did their male counterparts. All laboratory growth was more uniform but incrementally smaller than corresponding field growth. A hypothetical growth plot constructed from incremental growth of several crabs indicated ages at attainment of sexual maturity and legal size to be 10 and 30 months. A pictorial description of stone crab claw regeneration is presented. Minor claws realized greater regeneration after one and two molts (73.5% and 96.5% of pre-autotomized sizes) than did major claws (68.6% and 89.0%). Intermolt interval of laboratory crabs increased with larger carapace width sizes. Claw loss shortened or lengthened duration of the intermolt period depending upon whether the claw was removed shortly after a molt or later in the cycle. (Document has 27 pages.

Trade imbalance in international message telephone services

An econometric model is estimated to identify determinants of trade imbalance in international message telephone services markets. Results indicate that asymmetric market structure is important in explaining bilateral market imbalances for high income country pairs. For low and high income country pairs, GDP per capita is the dominant cause of traffic imbalances. The findings suggest that telecommunications liberalization policies are effective in reducing distortions in international traffic flows and settlement payments. However, liberalization should be accompanied by developmental programmes that enhance income per capita and telecommunications network investment in developing countries. Such programmes may be effective in providing a more equitable distribution of the gains from telecommunications reform across countries.Trade imbalance; international message telephone services

Development of a program assessment system at the SUNY-ESF Ranger School : The process, early results, and anticipated benefits

For the past two years, faculty at the SUNY-ESF Ranger School in Wanakena, New York, have been working with education consultants from Pacific Crest, Inc. to improve the quality of their teaching, their courses, the curriculum, and the Ranger School program in general. The ultimate goal of such efforts is to improve the quality and enhance the success of the school\u27s graduates. The faculty\u27s formalized efforts to improve quality have been focused most recently on the design and implementation of a Program Assessment System (PAS). The PAS developed for the Ranger School clearly articulates the enduring mission of the school, prioritizes the five-year goals of the program, and explicitly states the key criteria that will be used to assess and improve student, faculty, staff, and program performance. Further, the PAS clearly indicates the measures that will be used to compare actual performance against the stated standards. Representatives from the faculty, staff, administration, and alumni participated in the design of the PAS since all were recognized as having critical influence over program quality. This team approach fostered the development of a modernized and shared sense of purpose and direction. Equally important, it provided the entire group with the means to measure and evaluate in the years ahead whether the increased program quality they seek is being achieved. This paper describes in more detail both the process used to design a PAS and the specific components and measures that became part of the Ranger School\u27s PAS. If maintained, the PAS will, by design, provide the type of data, information, and self-assessment increasingly requested by external accrediting organizations, prospective students and their parents, alumni, and the public in general. Equally as exciting, it will continue to unite and propel the faculty, staff, and administration toward a shared mission, shared goals, and a collective desire for quality

Save Our Republic: Battling John Birch in California\u27s Conservative Cradle

Previous accounts of the development of the New American Right have demonstrated the popularity and resonance of the ideology in Southern California. However, these studies have not shown how contention surrounded conservatism’s ascendancy even in regions where it found eager disciples. “Save Our Republic” uses one conservative Southern California community as a vehicle to better understand the foundations of a wider movement and argues the growth of conservatism was not nearly as smooth as earlier studies have suggested. Santa Barbara, California, experienced a much more contentious introduction to the same conservative elements and exemplifies the larger ideological clash that occurred nationwide during the late 1950s and early 1960s between “establishment,” moderate Republicans and the party’s right flank. In California’s cradle of conservatism, the ideology’s birth was not an easy one. Santa Barbara should have provided a bonanza of support for the John Birch Society, a staunchly anticommunist organization founded in 1958 by retired businessman Robert H.W. Welch. Instead, its presence there in the early 1960s divided the city and inspired the sort of suspicion that ultimately hobbled the group’s reputation nationally. Rather than thriving in the city, the JBS impaled itself in a series of self-inflicted wounds that only worsened the effect these characterizations had on the group’s national reputation. Disseminated to a nationwide audience by local newspaper publisher Thomas M. Storke, who declared his intention to banish the organization from the city, the events that occurred in Santa Barbara throughout 1961 alerted other cities of the potential disruption the JBS could inspire in their communities. The JBS would forever bear the battle scars it earned in Santa Barbara. “Save Our Republic” argues the events in Santa Barbara exemplify the more pronounced political battle that was occurring throughout the nation in the 1960s as conservatives grappled to determine the bounds of their ideology. The threat from the right that caused so much handwringing in the halls of conservative power had an equally unsettling effect in the city’s parlors, churches, schoolhouses and newsrooms

Evaluation of Design Tools for Rapid Prototyping of Parallel Signal Processing Algorithms

Digital signal processing (DSP) has become a popular method for handling not only signal processing, but communications, and control system applications. A DSP application of interest to the Air Force is high speed avionics processing. The real time computing requirements of avionics processing exceed the capabilities of current single chip DSP processors, and parallelization of multiple DSP processors is a solution to handle such requirements. Designing and implementing a parallel DSP algorithm has been a lengthy process often requiring different design tools and extensive programming experience. Through the use of integrated software development tools, rapid prototyping becomes possible by simulating algorithms, generating code for workstations or DSP microprocessors, and generating hardware description language code for hardware synthesis. This research examines the use of one such tool, the Signal Processing WorkSystem (SPW) by the Alta Group of Cadence Design Systems, Inc., and how SPW supports the rapid prototyping process from an avionics algorithm design through simulation and hardware implementation. Throughout this process, SPW is evaluated as an aid to the avionics designer to meet design objectives and evaluate tradeoffs to find the best blend of efficiency and effectiveness. By designing a two dimensional fast Fourier transform algorithm as a specific avionics algorithm and exploring implementation options, SPW is shown to be a viable rapid prototyping solution allowing an avionics designer to focus on design trade-offs instead of implementation details while using parallelization to meet real-time application requirements

Use of the Dyadic Alternative to make learning more active, collaborative, and fun

I use the Dyadic Alternative in two sophomore-level courses that I teach at the Ranger School: “Forest Mensuration and Statistics” and “Tree Structure and Growth.” The Dyadic Alternative is an innovative teaching/learning method that involves students working together in cooperative pairs. It was suggested by Licht (1993) and is based on the idea that “two heads are better than one.” In essence, the Dyadic Alternative is a non-traditional, “upside-down”, teaching/ learning model, since formative quizzes on a chapter or unit precede the lecture and/or discussion of that unit. Moreover, students have the opportunity to collaborate on quizzes when using this method. The Dyadic Alternative forces students to take more responsibility for their own learning and encourages cooperation and active learning