Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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Arbitration is properly understood as a service offered and procured within a market, albeit a specialized one. A market, after all, is simply “a means by which the exchange of goods and services takes place as a result of buyers and sellers being in contact with one another, either directly or through mediating agents or institutions.” Encyclopedia Britannica online (available at https://bit.ly/37yktWX).

The market for the service known as arbitration is unusual in at least one respect: Unlike the case with most other goods or services, customers for arbitration come in adversarial pairs with different, commonly opposing, preferences in the selection of the service provider. This makes a better understanding of the selection of arbitrators especially important.

In Part 2 next month, I will look in more detail at how parties tend to shop for and select arbitrators within the market. This article examines the nature of the arbitration marketplace, with a special focus on the context of labor (union-management) arbitration.