By Tamia Sutherland and Russ Bleemer

President Biden’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, is well acquainted with conflict resolution’s role in legal practice from her law firm days.

The 51-year-old was elevated just last June to the appeals court by Biden, but has been on the bench since 2013, serving as a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C. She would be the first black woman Supreme Court justice if she is confirmed.

While her ADR-centric cases on the bench were few, Jackson–who clerked in 1999-2000 for Justice Stephen G. Breyer, whom she would replace, though she wasn’t at the Court for the justice’s seminal arbitration cases–has significant commercial conflict resolution work in her CV.

Most notably, while of counsel in the Washington office of Morrison & Foerster, Jackson did extensive work on the seminal case of Hall Street Associates LLC v. Mattel Inc., 552 U.S. 576 (2008) (available at http://bit.ly/38ELtSU), successfully preserving respondent Mattel’s arbitration award (pending additional court review) and standing for the proposition that the parties cannot expand the scope of review for an award because it is contrary to the Federal Arbitration Act’s mission.

Jackson’s MoFo litigation department work, on both the civil and criminal sides, was preceded by two years as an associate at one of the nation’s highest-profile commercial conflict resolution practices with mediator Kenneth Feinberg.  Jackson was an associate in Feinberg’s Washington firm, then known as the Feinberg Group, in 2002-2003, in the midst of Feinberg’s best-known case, when he served as special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001. Congress established the fund to aid victims and survivors of the 9/11 attacks; the fund used mediation-style processes to reach out to potential claimants, and evaluated applications, determined appropriate compensation, and disseminated awards.

Judge Jackson described her work at the firm in her Senate Judiciary Committee Questionnaire for Judicial Nominees ahead of a hearing on her nomination last April:

While at the Feinberg Group, I assisted in the negotiated (non-litigation) resolution of mass tort claims. I attended arbitration proceedings and advised client corporations regarding trust payment structures for
resolving mass-tort liability, such as asbestos claims.

She noted later in her disclosure, “my typical clients were large corporations facing mass tort liability. I specialized in mediation and arbitration procedures and in the evaluation of trust structures for the settlement of current and potential (future) tort claims.” She noted that she did not appear in court while working at the firm.

“I recall quite well the superlative legal skills of Judge Jackson while a member of the Feinberg Group Law Firm,” notes Ken Feinberg in an email. He continues:

Ketanji was involved in a series of matters relating to ADR: asbestos mediation, Dow-Corning breast implants mediations and some work on the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. Quite apart from her obvious legal skills, she proved to be a creative lawyer looking for paths to resolve complex mass tort litigation outside of the conventional legal system. She quickly recognized that mediation, arbitration and negotiation were cost effective, efficient and an abbreviated way to “get to yes.”

Feinberg concludes, “It was clear to me some 20 years ago that she was destined for greatness.”

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Jackson was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit Court by the Senate 53-44 on June 14. In a statement this morning, the White House noted that the president “sought a candidate with exceptional credentials, unimpeachable character, and unwavering dedication to the rule of law,” but also noted, in anticipation of a close confirmation vote, that “Judge Jackson has been confirmed by the Senate with votes from Republicans as well as Democrats three times.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D., N.Y., told reporters Friday afternoon he will seek “a prompt hearing” by the Senate Judiciary Committee, to be followed quickly by Senate confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court seat.

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Judge Jackson further detailed her ADR work in her Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire. She listed on her questionnaire the sole arbitration case for which she wrote an opinion, CEF Energia B.V. v. Italian Republic, No. 19-cv-3443 (KBJ) (D.D.C. Jul. 23, 2020).  In the case, Jackson granted Italy’s request to decline to confirm arbitration awards.  The two awards in favor of four energy companies against the Italian government were stayed in a Sweden court pending Italy’s challenge to the award, and the companies sought enforcement before Judge Jackson.

Jackson conducted an analysis of the power to stay proceedings in the United States while a foreign arbitral matter is continuing under the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, best known as the New York Convention. 

Noting “the ongoing set-aside proceedings that are taking place in Sweden (the primary jurisdiction of the parties’ arbitrations) and the significant interests in judicial economy and international comity that weigh in favor of staying this case,” Jackson stayed the confirmation decision pending the outcome in Sweden.

She wrote that a federal district court “must recognize and enforce a foreign arbitral award ‘unless it finds one of the grounds for refusal or deferral of recognition or enforcement of the award specified in the said Convention.’” 9 U.S.C. § 207. Furthermore, Jackson found that “a court ‘may refuse to enforce the award only on the grounds explicitly set forth in Article V of the Convention.’”

The applicable grounds for refusal Jackson highlighted from Article V of the New York Convention, were that the agreement is not valid if (1) “award …has been set aside or suspended by a competent authority of the country in which … that award was made[,]” or (2) recognition or enforcement… would be contrary to the public policy of that country. New York Convention Art. V(1)(e), Art. V(2)(b).

But Judge Jackson’s holding to stay the confirmation was supported by her findings that the interest of the judicial economy, and the test in Europcar Italia S.P.A. v. Maiellano Tours, 156 F.3d 310 (2d Cir. 1998), which she wrote weighed in favor of staying the case. Quoting Naegele v. Albers, 355 F. Supp.2d 129, 141 (D.D.C. 2005), Jackson stated that  “[l]itigating essentially the same issues in two separate forums is not in the interest of judicial economy or in the parties’ best interests.”

In concluding her point that the interest of the judicial economy weighed in favor of staying the case, she acknowledged the length of time that had elapsed and wrote:

This Court fully understands that Petitioners have been pursuing recompense from Italy since 2015 and that the resolution in the [Sweden] Court may take one to two more years. . . . But it is not at all clear that proceeding with the instant litigation will necessarily lead to a faster resolution of the complex issues that must be determined prior to enforcing the awards. …

Judge Jackson carefully analyzed each of the six Europcar factors in deciding whether to stay an action under Article VI of the New York Convention in relation to the CEF Energia B.V. facts, concluding that the Europcar factors weighed in favor of staying the case.

She also noted that the European litigation over the awards stemmed from the controversial European Court decision in Slovak Republic v. Achmea B.V., Case C-284/16 (2018) (available at https://bit.ly/2Kf8OmM), in which the court found that “intra-[European Union] treaty arbitration provisions are invalid to the extent that they prohibit judicial review of EU law by EU courts.” Achmea concerned cases under the Energy Charter Treaty—the treaty under which the CEF Energia B.V. arbitrations were conducted.

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In addition to CEF Energia, B.V. v. Italian Republic, Judge Jackson had eight other arbitration-focused cases on her docket covering a range of arbitration issues. In Metropolitan Municipality of Lima v. Rutas De Lima S.A.C. Jackson presided over an issue regarding Federal Arbitration Act Section 10, where the city of Lima, Peru, petitioned and moved for an order vacating an arbitral award that was rendered in favor of the respondent, a contractor. The matter was reassigned to Judge Florence Y. Pan before Jackson could rule on the merits.  

The other cases mostly involved confirmation proceedings.

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Here is how Judge Jackson described her work on Hall Street Associates from her Senate Judiciary questionnaire:

From 2007 to 2008, I was part of a litigation team that represented respondent Mattel in a Supreme Court case involving the section of the Federal Arbitration Act that grants expedited judicial review to confirm, vacate, or modify an arbitration award. I was responsible for reviewing the factual record related to the subject matter of the underlying arbitration, and I drafted parts of both the primary brief for respondent and two supplemental briefs on specified issues the Supreme Court ordered. I also assisted in the preparation of oral argument counsel. The Supreme Court ultimately agreed with Mattel’s argument that the Act’s grounds for vacatur and modification of arbitration awards are exclusive for parties seeking expedited review under the FAA, but remanded the case for a determination regarding whether the parties did, in fact, intend for the arbitration proceeding at issue to be governed by the FAA.

She listed the case as one the 10 most significant litigated matters she has worked on in her career on the Senate Judiciary questionnaire.

The case is often cited for limiting the ability of parties to contract for review of their arbitration awards, though it does not apply to arbitration awards written solely under state laws, where, at least theoretically, parties could contract for expanded review under some circumstances.

Hall Street Associates also left alive the judicial standard of “manifest disregard” of the law for overturning awards under FAA Section 10, which commentators have urged needs clarification.  See, e.g., Stuart M. Boyarsky, “The Uncertain Status of the Manifest Disregard Standard One Decade after Hall Street,” 123 Dick. L. Rev. 167 (2018) (available at https://bit.ly/3slmLTk), and Michael H. LeRoy, “Are Arbitrators Above the Law? The ‘Manifest Disregard of the Law’ Standard,” 52 B.C. L.Rev. 137 (2011) (available at https://bit.ly/3ImK05i).  

The 116-page Senate Judiciary Questionnaire prepared by Judge Jackson containing descriptions of her professional work and education history can be found at https://bit.ly/35vbFSJ.

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Sutherland, a second-year law student at the Howard University School of Law, in Washington, D.C., is a CPR 2021-22 intern. Bleemer edits Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation for CPR.

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