NCJ Number
96676
Journal
UCLA Law Review Volume: 30 Issue: 5 Dated: (June 1983) Pages: 881-897
Date Published
1983
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This paper explains the phrase, 'his own brand of justice' and addresses the differences between judges and arbitrators.
Abstract
The phrase is based on the realization that arbitrators and judges look to different resources of judgment and tend to think differently about them when deciding issues out of collective bargaining. The professional concerns of judges cluster around procedural and substantive legal problems. Among the sectors of legal concern, labor disputes constitute a negligible percentage of judicial business and of that portion, judicial review of labor arbitration is statistically almost invisible. In marked contrast, the expertise and competence of labor arbitrators is concentrated in only one of those sectors, that of collective bargaining disputes between employers and unions. Further, judges should not become preoccupied with the postlitigation concerns of those who appear before them; labor arbitrators, however, must be sensitive to the continuing nature of the specific collective bargaining relationship from which a grievance has arisen. Judges are selected to sit in judgment by processes that are almost wholly depersonalized; arbitrators are chosen on the basis of information networks. For example, arbitral decisions are reproduced by subscription services and data marketing services to help in the selection of arbitrators. Collective bargaining arbitrators are selected for their particular brands of justice; courts should not override the commitment that collective bargainers have voluntarily contracted to arbitral finality. Included are 42 footnotes. are 42 footnotes.