Originally from Dispute Resolution Journal

When I accepted the invitation to speak here today, my good friend Harold Newman, the chairman of the New York State Public Employment Relations Board, sent me a long and literate letter. Harold made a number of points.

The first was the antiquity of the arbitration process. Harold quoted sources on arbitration that went back as far as Aristotle's observation that "The arbitrator looks to what is equitable, the judge to what is law; and it was for this purpose that arbitration was introduced, namely, so equity might prevail."

It struck me that Harold was trying to establish that arbitrators practice the world's oldest profession. But even though I've sometimes heard a similar opinion expressed by people unhappy with the results of collective bargaining, I dismissed the thought. It's common knowledge that the oldest profession belongs to lawyers.

I was intrigued, though, by the ancient precedents for the process of arbitration and I mentioned it to the resident sage and wiseman of my staff, Rabbi Israel Mowshowitz.