Major League Baseball Players Assn. v. Garvey, 532 U.S. 504, 9 (2001) (per curiam)

Page:   Index   Previous  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  Next

512

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYERS ASSN. v. GARVEY

Stevens, J., dissenting

the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice Ginsburg, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

I agree with the Court that in Garvey v. Roberts, 203 F. 3d 580 (CA9 2000), the Ninth Circuit should not have disturbed the arbitrator's award. Correction of that error sets this case straight. I see no need to say more.

Justice Stevens, dissenting.

It is well settled that an arbitrator "does not sit to dispense his own brand of industrial justice." Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U. S. 593, 597 (1960). We have also said fairly definitively, albeit in dicta, that a court should remedy an arbitrator's "procedural aberrations" by vacating the award and remanding for further proceedings. Paperworkers v. Misco, Inc., 484 U. S. 29, 40-41, n. 10 (1987). Our cases, however, do not provide significant guidance as to what standards a federal court should use in assessing whether an arbitrator's behavior is so untethered to either the agreement of the parties or the factual record so as to constitute an attempt to "dispense his own brand of industrial justice." Nor, more importantly, do they tell us how, having made such a finding, courts should deal with "the extraordinary circumstance in which the arbitrator's own rulings make clear that, more than being simply erroneous, his finding is completely inexplicable and borders on the irrational." Garvey v. Roberts, 203 F. 3d 580, 590 (CA9 2000) (case below). Because our case law is not sufficiently clear to allow me to conclude that the case below was wrongly decided—let alone to conclude that the decision was so wrong as to require the extraordinary remedy of a sum-

Page:   Index   Previous  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007