Title: Judicial Review and the Limits of Arbitral Authority: Lessons from the Law of Contract
Abstract: Arbitration may be conceptualized either as a species of adjudication or as a species of contract. In the former model, the arbitrator is a private judge, hired by the parties but tasked with performing the same sorts of functions that public judges normally perform: finding facts and applying predetermined rules (normally legal rules) to those facts in order to assign rights and obligations. In the latter model, the arbitrator is a "contract reader," serving as the parties' agent designated by them in advance to supply the terms of their agreement that they did not foresee and that are necessary to resolve a conflict between them.