The Supreme Court granted certiorari in January to resolve what may initially appear to observers to be a minor issue of federal statutory interpretation. The National Labor Relations Board has held that it is an unfair labor practice under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 for employers to require employees to sign mandatory arbitration agreements. The U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals had been unanimous in refusing to enforce the NLRB rule—until last year when the Seventh and Ninth Circuits agreed with the NLRB. In this issue of Infrastructure, Jay Range and Bryan Cleveland examine three controversial cases, resulting in a circuit split that impacts the employment agreements of millions of Americans and potentially will have far reaching implications for other areas of the law. The authors conclude “the once mundane world of alternative dispute resolution has become politicized and divided along party lines over the issue of employee and consumer access to class adjudication.” Also in this issue is the first in a series of articles on the Section’s first 100 years. Compiled and edited by Pete Lacouture, who edited Recent Developments for twelve years, the articles offer a fascinating look into the growth of public utilities and regulated industries in the United States.
May 01, 2017
Chair’s Column
By John J. Beardsworth Jr.
As a reminder, the ABA’s annual meeting will take place in New York from August 10-15. This is a great opportunity to interact with members not only from our Section, but others as well. I encourage all to attend.
This is my last column, and I want to say that it has been a privilege serving as your Chair over the past year. We have done great work from delivering Recent Developments and a 100-year history of the Section, to providing a wealth of webinar content on matters related to our industries. I would like to thank the Section for its sponsorship of four excellent on-demand webinars that are worth watching: Cybersecurity in Regulated Industries; Natural Gas: Essential to a Lower Carbon Energy Future; Changing Mix of U.S. Power Generation; and Current Legal Challenges in Energy and Water Infrastructure Development. These can be found by visiting the ABA Web Store at shop.americanbar.org and searching by title.
None of this work would have been possible without the efforts of Sue Koz, our Section Director, to whom we are indebted; Casey Wren and Chuck Patrizia, our co-editors of Infrastructure; Wendy Smith, its Managing Editor; Tamara Kowalski, its designer; and the steady behind-the-scenes work of Chris Alderman. Thank you all for your dedicated service to the Section.
Finally, I would like to welcome Pete Lacouture as the new Chair of the Section. Pete is taking over in a time of continued change and I wish him the best as he leads a Section that has become such a valuable resource for how these changes will impact the industries we represent.