KU News Release

Christopher R. Drahozal

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• School of Law

LAWRENCE — A research initiative led by a professor at the University of Kansas School of Law has received recognition from the world’s largest business federation.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform presented the 2009 Research Award to the Searle Civil Justice Institute at Northwestern University School of Law for its in-depth empirical research on consumer arbitrations. Christopher R. Drahozal, the John M. Rounds Professor of Law at KU, chairs Searle’s Consumer Arbitration Task Force. He accepted the award last week with Henry N. Butler, executive director of the Searle Center on Law, Regulation and Economic Growth, at the Institute for Legal Reform’s 10th annual Legal Reform Summit in Washington, D.C.

“Searle’s research has become an invaluable resource in the policy debate over pending congressional legislation to ban pre-dispute arbitration agreements in consumer and other contracts,” said Institute for Legal Reform President Lisa Rickard.

In March, Searle’s Consumer Arbitration Task Force released its preliminary report, “Consumer Arbitration before the American Arbitration Association,” the most comprehensive empirical research project to date on the use of consumer arbitration. The Searle study found that measures to protect consumers’ rights are routinely enforced in American Arbitration Association consumer arbitrations and that outcomes are not biased in favor of businesses that arbitrate repeatedly.

Drahozal is the author of multiple books and articles on commercial arbitration and has taught and given presentations on the subject in Europe and the United States. His research focuses on the law and economics of dispute resolution, particularly arbitration. In addition to chairing the Consumer Arbitration Task Force, he is serving as an associate reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Third) of the U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration.