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14 

AT&T MOBILITY LLC v. CONCEPCION 

Opinion of the Court 

First,  the  switch  from  bilateral  to  class  arbitration 
sacrifices  the  principal  advantage  of  arbitration—its  in-
formality—and makes the process slower, more costly, and 
more  likely  to  generate  procedural  morass  than  final
judgment.    “In  bilateral  arbitration,  parties  forgo  the 
procedural  rigor  and  appellate  review  of  the  courts  in
order  to  realize  the  benefits  of  private  dispute  resolution: 
lower costs, greater efficiency and speed, and the ability to 
choose expert adjudicators to resolve specialized disputes.” 
559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 21).  But before an arbitrator 
may decide the merits of a claim in classwide procedures, 
he must first decide, for example, whether the class itself
may  be  certified,  whether  the  named  parties  are  suffi-
ciently  representative  and  typical,  and  how  discovery  for
the  class  should  be  conducted.  A  cursory  comparison  of
bilateral  and  class  arbitration  illustrates  the  difference. 
According to the American Arbitration Association (AAA),
the  average  consumer  arbitration  between  January  and 
August  2007  resulted  in  a  disposition  on  the  merits  in
six  months,  four  months  if  the  arbitration  was  conducted 
by  documents  only.  AAA,  Analysis  of  the  AAA’s  Con-
sumer Arbitration Caseload, online at http://www.adr.org/
si.asp?id=5027  (all  Internet  materials  as  visited  Apr.  25, 
2011,  and  available  in  Clerk  of  Court’s  case  file).    As  of 
September  2009,  the  AAA  had  opened  283  class  arbitra-
tions.  Of  those,  121  remained  active,  and  162  had  been 
settled,  withdrawn,  or  dismissed.   Not  a  single  one,  how-
ever, had resulted in a final award on the merits.  Brief for 
AAA  as  Amicus  Curiae  in  Stolt-Nielsen,  O. T.  2009,  No. 
08–1198,  pp.  22–24.  For  those  cases  that  were  no  longer
active,  the  median  time  from  filing  to  settlement,  with-
drawal,  or  dismissal—not  judgment  on  the  merits—was
583 days, and the mean was 630 days.  Id., at 24.7 

—————— 

7 The  dissent  claims  that  class  arbitration  should  be  compared  to
class  litigation,  not  bilateral  arbitration.  Post,  at  6–7.    Whether  arbi-