More on arbitration.

• Author: Longino, John
• Position: Letters - Letter to the editor

Parochialism, indeed, in arbitration! Arbitrations are the result of an experience-based predilection by potential parties (to what would otherwise be litigation) that the pool of potential judges isn't up to the task of resolving important issues well. The public's strong collective judgment in favor of arbitration may arise from the judicial selection process, which tends to entrench judges as a group of older lawyers from which have been culled those who (a) are capable (because of their talents) of earning free-market incomes and/or (b) are not motivated by power and politics (i.e., immune to "blackrobe-itis").

The public's embracing of the initially more-costly arbitration forum is an experiential-based bias against judges, who as a group don't decide issues well, and in favor of arbitrators who get paid specifically because, as a group, they do. So, should we be surprised that there is a "longstanding (and continuing) judicial hostility to arbitration" such that judges will ignore the law to prevent an arbitrator from deciding issues? I have been a commercial litigator and member of The Florida Bar for almost a quarter century (and of the Georgia Bar for almost a third of a century) yet have never met a judge who embraces sending cases to arbitration. [Because of the vagaries of...