Two Troutman Sanders LLP attorneys discuss the Concepcion ruling, examining the historical landscape of arbitration, the law prior to the ruling, and what courts have done since.

When the Supreme Court (Court) handed down its opinions in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011), the majority’s holding engendered breathless (at least in legal terms) headlines. Clearly, as arbitration’s opponents and proponents concurred, five jurists, led by Justice Antonin Scalia, had consigned bans on class-action arbitration waivers into oblivion in the hallowed name of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U.S.C. §§1–16.

Possibly due to the legal establishment’s quick recognition of its utility and peril, however, feverish debate over this holding’s validity and advisability beclouded the lead opinion’s subtle affirmation of older filaments of legal thought and endorsement of a new analytical approach to the FAA’s so-called “Savings Clause.”

Time’s passage has changed little, this initial ignorance ossifying instead. As a result, in opinion after opinion issued over the past eight years, these gravid assertions have rarely featured, and defects traceable to their inexplicable omission and damaging to their precedential value now plague much of arbitration law’s post-Concepcion jurisprudence. To discern these latent possibilities and buried flaws, one must return to, and pull back the curtain on, this most controversial matter.

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