To arbitrate or not to arbitrate, that is the question. That has become a pretty hackneyed way of putting an issue in play. Here’s another hackneyed way of expressing something: “We’re not going to touch that third rail.” Roughly translated that means that Ruminations, in its old age [approaching 200 blog postings] is getting too wise to take a firm stand and offer anything other than an equivocal answer to that question, a lawyer’s answer so to speak – “It depends.”

Before anyone switches off to watch Pawn Stars or something else, let us explain. To us, it depends on what the subject matter of a dispute might be. An easy example is that only a court can issue a warrant of possession that a governmental official will enforce. So, we’re thinking that’s not a good “subject” for arbitration.

On the other side of the equation, except with respect to a few substantive areas where a subset of “special subject matter” judges has been selected, the rest are expected to be able to parse their way through the substance of any kind of dispute. So, when it comes to highly technical matters, such as construction issues, using a subject-matter expert arbitrator would seem to be the way to go. That is, it would be if both sides of the dispute are ready to accept some form of “objective” truth. By the way, the court process (and, by extension, the arbitration process) is thought of as a “truth-seeking” process. [Read more…]