Employment Arbitration at the Crossroads: An Assessment and Call for Action

Arbitration agreements must be on equal footing with all types of contracts. This stark reality demands that the various stakeholders in the arbitration community converge in the interest of designing and institutionalizing arbitration mechanics and processes that, as a start, exceed the minimum requirements to avoid arguments of substantive unconscionability and, more broadly, provide the fair, just, and accountable alternative dispute resolution system the FAA and the U.S. Supreme Court have indicated it can be. This paper seeks to guide this next stage of the debate by first reviewing the doctrinal developments over the past thirty years that led to a settled state of arbitration law. We then exhort the various stakeholders to collectively take up the challenge of this next stage. In particular, we hope to prompt that cooperation by laying out the essential elements of a fair and just employment arbitration mechanism

Liberty, Diversity, Academic Freedom, and Survival: Preferential Hiring Among Religiously-Affliated Institutions of Higher Education

This article discusses the exemptions given to religious educational institutions from the usual Title VII protections afforded employees. The author supports the use of such exemptions when they promote diversity and protecting the fundamental foundation of the institution itself, but warns that there is a point where the exemptions must not be used even when they are within the power of the institution to invoke. Such inappropriate instances include promoting faculty or granting tenure to faculty members who are not of the religious persuasion of the institution, or hiring the best and brightest faculty over the professor who simply agrees with the religious ideals promoted by the institution

In the Best Interest of Children: A Proposal for Corporate Guardians Ad Litem

Children are frequently implicated in and impacted by business activities, and as such, they are corporate stakeholders. Yet children do not have a direct voice in corporate decision-making. Other stakeholders—employees, customers, and suppliers—can and do influencec orporate strategy, but children lack the organization, standing, and legal capacity to assert similar influence. Instead of treating children as a coherent stakeholder group with rights and interests to be respected and supported, firms tend to view children only as potential victimsor coveted consumers. That view is short-sighted. Recent internationa lnorm-building related to children’s rights and business point toward a more comprehensive consideration of children’s interests in the broad range of business activities. Children are community members with long-term interests in the health and vitality of the communities and environments within which businesses operate. Firms employ children’s parents, and employment practices directly impact children’s development, educational opportunities, and quality of life. Children’s best interests substantially overlap with sustainable business practicesand implicate human rights generally. Therefore, firms must develop the expertise to identify and give voice to the best interests of children, yet most firms currently lack the capacity to do so.This Article introduces the first corporate model that can effectively advocate for children’s best interests, which is an adapted version of the long-used guardian ad litem model used in family court proceedings. Courts appoint guardians ad litem when their decisions impact children, who cannot adequately represent themselves because they lack the sophistication or capacity to advocate or state their own best interests. Guardians ad litem serve as objective and impartial officials whose duty is to protect and advocate for the best interests ofthe children—and they serve only the children. This Article therefore asserts that companies should embed “corporate guardians ad litem” within their organizations to ensure that the best interests of children are considered in the development of corporate strategy and decision-making. The Article introduces three versions of the corporate guardian ad litem, namely, director-level, officer-level, and project-level