2023 Philip B. Blank Memorial Lecture on Attorney Ethics
Wednesday, March 1, 2023 | 12:45p.m.–1:45p.m.
ELISABETH HAUB SCHOOL OF LAW
Preston Hall, Tudor Room
78 North Broadway, White Plains, NY
In-person event / Broadcast Live via Zoom
1 PD credit will be awarded to students who attend in person.
PD credit will not be awarded for Zoom attendance.
The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) provides for the vacatur of an arbitral award, “where there was evident partiality or corruption in the arbitrators.” This standard is both short in words and clarity. While corruption is generally understood, the concept of partiality—let alone evident partiality—has been widely interpreted by courts. The last Supreme Court case on this subject is over 50 years old. Arbitrators could look to analogous state law-based guidelines for arbitrators and even ABA opinions interpreting Model Rules regarding judges’ social or close personal relationships with lawyers and parties.
Instead, this talk proposes that, rather than cobbling together appropriate guidance from analogous situations, the FAA itself should be amended to make the language clearer.
ABOUT THE LECTURER
Professor Schneider is a renowned professor, scholar and lecturer specializing in negotiation, plea bargaining, negotiation pedagogy, ethics, gender and international conflict. Professor Schneider is the Director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution at Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. Previously, she was director of the nationally ranked ADR program at Marquette University Law School for over two decades, where she was also the inaugural director of the university’s Institute for Women’s Leadership.
Professor Schneider has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Woman of the Year Award by the Wisconsin Law Journal and the Association for Women Lawyers. She also received the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work, the highest scholarly award given by the ABA in the field of dispute resolution.
Additionally, Professor Schneider is prolific author, with many articles and textbooks to her credit, including most recently Dispute Resolution: Beyond the Adversarial Model (with Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Lela Love and Michael Moffitt) now in its third edition. She regularly presents her work and provides negotiation trainings around the world.
Among her many leadership roles, Professor Schneider is a founding editor of Indisputably, the blog for ADR law faculty, and the founder of the Dispute Resolution Works-in-Progress annual conference.
Professor Schneider received her A.B. cum laude from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs and her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School. She also received a Diploma from the Academy of European Law in Florence, Italy.
ABOUT THE LECTURE
The Philip B. Blank Memorial Lecture on Attorney Ethics was established by the family, friends and colleagues of the late Philip B. Blank, Associate Dean for External Affairs and Professor of Law at Pace University School of Law. In honor of Dean Blank's commitment to legal ethics, the Blank Lecture has presented distinguished members of the legal community recognized for their leadership in the area of attorney ethics and practice.