Honestly, I would be all for outright abolishing arbitration. I have yet to see anything actually good come out of arbitration other than a ruling that protects the entity that forced arbitration in the first place.

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avidiax 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Arbitration does help with the problem of overwhelmed and expensive courts. What is needed is fair arbitration.

The outcome should approximate the outcome of the full court proceeding.

Make the arbitration rulings appealable in court on the basis of factual errors, errors of law, corruption, and potential errors by omission (i.e. failure of discovery). And make the company responsible for the full costs of the litigation if the arbiter's judgement is overturned. And punish the arbiter, perhaps a 2 year ban on accepting any case from that industry.

I'm sure more adjustments would be needed, but it should be possible to get both the arbiters and the companies to want arbitration to be a faster, cheaper route to the same outcome as the courts, rather than a steamroller that avoids all accountability for the company.

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AlienRobot 8 hours ago | parent [-]

>Arbitration does help with the problem of overwhelmed and expensive courts. What is needed is fair arbitration.

That sounds like you want all the benefits of an actual court without all the costs of an actual court?

	▲	avidiax 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I want the court result for free and instantaneously. Barring that, faster and cheaper is better. Simply limiting discovery, counterbalanced by loosened rules of evidence, followed by allowing specialist arbiters and avoiding the multi-year wait for a court proceeding seems to be faster and cheaper. There is a small error introduced by allowing discovery of 1,000 pages of emails instead of 100,000, and by allowing hearsay or affidavits, but probably most disputes would not strictly depend on deposing a dozen people and interpreting the 23rd box of company documents.

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asgraham 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The good is hidden: court systems are already overwhelmed. If the arbitration cases were added, then it’d take even longer to get a court date.

(Which isn’t to say I think the system as it is is good, just that there is a good)

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ethin 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Then fix the court system? Create more courts, hire more judges/clerks... I mean, I know it isn't "as simple" as that, but that's the proper solution instead of creating a half-legal half-favoritist system where a company can force you into arbitration where, more often than not, the arbitrator is paid by the company, and therefore rules in it's favor.

	▲	phil21 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Or reduce the demand on the legal system? Just adding more expense to an outright broken thing isn't an actual fix. It's a half-measure patch at best. And no, I don't mean create a workaround like arbitration. Why do court cases take so long and suck up so many resources? Start with that. Perhaps reduce the amount of legislation/laws/etc. on the books, and write laws that limit the litigious society we find ourselves living in. That is of course easier said than done, but we've chosen this path and can choose to unwind it if we have enough desire to.

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zb1plus 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sounds like the solution is just hire more judges instead