Sep 2, 2026 Sergio J. CamposCourts Law
Suzanne Chiodo, Gerard Kennedy & Alyssa S. King,
Hryniak’s Erosion: Summary Judgment in Ontario (Feb. 3, 2026) (Osgoode Legal Stud., Rsch. Paper No. 6401158, available at
SSRN)
Any serious study of civil procedure in the United States should learn from other procedural systems. Comparative study has a number of advantages. It can provide insights about alternatives. It can shed light on beneficial features of our own procedural system that we take for granted. And it can generate questions for further study.
In Hyrniak’s Erosion: Summary Judgment in Ontario, Suzanne E. Chiodo, Gerard J. Kennedy, & Alyssa King conduct an insightful and nuanced empirical study of summary judgment motions in Ontario provincial courts (the equivalent of state courts in the United States). The motivation for the study is a tension between two views of summary judgment. The first, endorsed by the Supreme Court of Canada in Hryniak v. Mauldin (2014), views summary judgment as a vehicle for increasing access to justice by reducing the costs of litigation. The central idea is that the amount of procedure should be “proportional” to the case, and in some lower-stake cases providing a full trial would be a form of “undue process,” raising costs and discouraging plaintiffs from filing suit. The second, endorsed by the Ontario Court of Appeals, discourages summary judgment because such motions are themselves costly and can hinder the “full appreciation of the evidence and issues” needed to resolve a case. Continue reading "Learning from Others: Summary Judgment in Canada"
Sep 1, 2026 Robert HillmanContracts
Myriam Gilles,
Arbitration in Name Only, 121
Nw. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2026), available at
SSRN.
Arbitration in Name Only seeks to resolve the many issues generated by current-day arbitration agreements between a business drafter and consumers or employees. The author, Myriam Gilles, observes that under the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), courts generally enforce such agreements even though the terms call for arbitration heavily in favor of the business drafter, provide for cumbersome procedures, and allow for unilateral modification and termination by the business. Such terms negate “arbitration’s definitional core,” the article points out, which consists of neutrality, “procedural minimalism,” and mutuality of obligation.
The article ably fills out the meaning of each characteristic of arbitration’s core mentioned above. In part, neutrality means the absence of a stake by the adjudicator on one side or the other. Procedural minimalism means that the procedure must be “streamlined,” “informal,” and not “cumbersome,” thereby ensuring the efficiency of the process. Mutuality means that both parties are bound, not that one party has the unilateral right to change or terminate the arbitration agreement at will. Continue reading "What is in a Label? The Problem of Imitation Agreements to Arbitrate"
