Very few things can still reduce me to an adolescent rumble of uttering very, very, very cool, and it is particularly remarkable when something in the practice of law has that effect. These three posts, from Workplace Prof, Adjunct Law Prof Blog, and SCOTUSBLOG had that effect on me when I came in to them on my desktop this morning. They all discuss the fact that the Supreme Court has accepted a case presenting the question of whether parties to arbitration agreements can contract around the Federal Arbitration Act and change the extent of judicial review of an arbitrator’s ruling. As I have discussed in a number of posts in the past, I am one of many people who have a healthy skepticism about commercial arbitration, and one of my many concerns with the format has to do with the extremely limited judicial review of arbitration decisions, even ones that are obviously and fundamentally flawed. I discussed this point in some detail here. For those clients who are interested in arbitrating, I often counsel close analysis of the pluses and minuses of doing so, and in particular I recommend attention to the arbitration agreement itself with the idea of adding into it particular protections or litigation tools that would otherwise be missing from the process. Now, it looks like the Supreme Court will be addressing the question of to what extent parties can actually do this. As I said, very, very cool, at least to those of us with a long standing interest in the pros and cons of arbitration, and how to improve it by private agreement.