• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.165-187
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• 2011

This paper investigates on the legal doctrine of "voluntary, knowing, and intelligent" (VKI Doctrine). The main points that were discussed include the history of the VKI doctrine and the US courts' attitudes toward the doctrine. It was also discussed how the VKI doctrine influenced the protection of consumer who agreed to arbitrate with businesses. The US courts' attitudes have shown to be split in application of the VKI doctrine to disputes in the enforceability of arbitration agreement between the consumers and the businesses. In order for the arbitration agreement to be invalidated, the state legislature cannot enact law that are directly targeted toward the validity of arbitration agreement. Rather the contract law in each of the state should be applied to the evaluation of the validity of an arbitration agreement. As the more and more consumers become familiar with the arbitration, the need for the VKI doctrine to protect the individual consumers in arbitration is expected to be diminished in future disputes.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.61-80
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• 2013

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a decision on the case between AT&T and Concepcion, which confirmed the contractuality of a defense as a threshold to distinguish between what is a viable defense for invalidation of consumer arbitration agreement and what is not. In this paper, the adhesiveness of arbitration clause, which is a unique character for consumer arbitration, is investigated in the U.S. as a legal defense to invalidate the consumer arbitration agreements, and its contractuality and related legal doctrines are analyzed. The legal issues of consumer arbitration have been analysed in several legal perspectives including the voluntary, knowing and intelligent doctrine, doctrine of separation, contract of adhesion and the contractuality of defenses. Among all of these, the first three issues are related with arbitration clause, and the last one, the contractuality of defenses, reflects the nature of defenses invalidating the consumer arbitration agreement.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.89-105
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• 2019

This paper reviews and analyzes the U.S. cases and statutes on the issue of party autonomy in arbitration agreement. Arbitration agreement has been interpreted somewhat differently from general contracts because its legal characteristics are not purely contractual by nature. For example, some legal scholars insist that an arbitration contract is more about an agreement on a process of dispute resolution than a creation of rights and obligations to avoid litigation. Party autonomy was discussed in diverse legal perspectives including contract of adhesion, VKI principle, and separability of arbitration clause. These three legal perspectives are discussed to set the legal relationship between party autonomy and protection of consumers in consumer arbitration. In addition, it was discussed how legal defects in the formation of an arbitration contract can influence the party autonomy. The legal defects that were discussed to analyze the relationship between arbitration agreement and party autonomy included misrepresentation, fraud, mistake, duress, and undue influence.