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The majority of arbitrations are conducted by a individually single procedures which have two parties and are governed by one contract with one arbitration agreement between two parties. Recently, however, arbitrations involving multiparty disputes have been increased, which arise in the context of the more complex international transaction, insurance and construction, etc. Such disputes may concern more than one contractual agreement, and one or more of those agreements may not contain arbitration clauses. Under this circumstances, the issues are whether arbitration is enforceable when no all parties to the dispute are bound to arbitrate. A party's ability to arbitrate any disputes arises from its consent as a signatory to a contract between himself and other party which includes an arbitration clause. Non-signatory to a contract with arbitral agreement, therefore, should not be bound to arbitrate any disputes without his consent to do so. But a related party that has not signed an agreement to arbitrate may be compelled or permitted to participate in an arbitration when he is found in circumstances of piercing the corporate veil, principal-agent relationship, assumption of agreement to arbitrate, or estoppel. Civil Procedure Rules permits the consolidation of litigations, joinder of parties or claims into a single procedure, and the third party's intervention to it, where common issues of law and fact exit, for reasons of economy and consistency of the judgments. Similarly, in the arbitration procedure, arbitral tribunals or courts may permit or order consolidations, joinders, or interventions with all parties's consents. The U.S. class/classwide arbitration or an arbitral class action is a hybrid procedure of class action and mandatory binding arbitration, in which any dispute is required to be resolved through an arbitration by an agreement. While the AAA has the rules for this classwide arbitration, the Federal Arbitration Act or the Uniform Arbitration Act don't provide for it at all. For the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution, courts' assistances will be necessary to determine class issues for class certification, notice, adequacy of class representation, and settlement, etc.

Consumers repeatedly make small sum purchases through business-to-consumer contracts, usually without incident. Consumer areas have been increasing; therefore, consumer disputes have been occurring frequently as well. In international consumer transactions, it is not easy to solve consumer disputes by applying the laws of different countries. Resolving disputes by using the consumer arbitration system can be a measure to protect consumers. In the U.S., a class arbitration is being operated as a mixed dispute resolution system of class action and arbitration. Consumer Arbitration has long been a controversial issue in the U.S. It is therefore a lesson for us to examine related cases. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, DIRECTV v. Imburgia, was looked into and after a summary of the facts, issues, and opinions and opposing opinions that had a tight controversy, a close analysis was done. The analysis through this judgment is as follows: first, the contraction of consumer protection; second, the expansion of the Federal Arbitration Act scope; third, the class arbitration's restriction; and fourth, the submission of the arbitration fairness act.

Arbitration is an alternative dispute resolution mechanism based on the parties' agreement to resolve any disputes parties may have by arbitration rather than litigation in court. Parties' consent to arbitrate, which must be manifest in the parties' arbitration clause or agreement, is the foundation for arbitration; thus, the language of an arbitration agreement is often of utmost importance in determining the intent of the parties regarding many aspects of arbitration proceedings, such as, the scope of arbitral proceedings, arbitral seat, and authority of arbitral tribunals, among others. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela (2019) that ambiguity in arbitration agreement as to availability of class arbitration should be resolved in favor of individual arbitration, and therefore, class arbitration would be precluded. Such holding was met with criticism by four separate dissenting opinions, in which the dissenting Justices have disagreed with the majority's interpretation of the arbitration agreement at issue, as well as, its rejection of application of state law in resolving contractual ambiguity. This article analyzes the Supreme Court's decision and reviews the Court's approach in construction of the arbitration agreement. Nevertheless, because the Supreme Court declined to provide clear guidelines as to precisely what contractual basis is required to permit class arbitration, either silence or ambiguity in arbitration agreements will be resolved by disallowing class arbitration.

For recent years, several disputes between Korean consumers and multinational companies have arisen. Since the disputes were big and material that children's safety was at issue, a question started if Korean law properly has protected consumers' rights against multinational companies. While the Korean legal society tried to legislate punitive compensation with this concern, the U.S. Supreme Court reached an interesting case law regarding consumer contracts. A recent trend on consumer contracts in the United States shows that general terms have arbitration clause with class action waiver. As much as international arbitration has worked as the most effective resolution in international commercial disputes, the concept is still foreign and the experts are not approachable to lay individual consumers. However, class action in arbitration can hugely help for lay individual consumers to bring a case before arbitration tribunal. California courts consistently showed the analysis that the practical impact of prohibiting class action in arbitration clause is to ban lay individual consumers from fighting for their rights. However, the Supreme Court held that the arbitration clause shall be enforced as parties agree even if consumers practically cannot fight for their rights in the end. Even though consumer contracts are a typical example of lack of parity and of adhesive contract, the Supreme Court still applies liberalism that parties are equal in power and free to agree. This case law has a crucial implication since Korean consumers buy goods and services from the U.S. and other countries in everyday life. Accordingly, they are deemed to agree on the dispute resolution clauses, which might violate their constitutional right to bring their cases before the adjudication tribunal. This issue could be more important than adopting punitive compensation because consumers' rights are not necessarily governed by Korean law but by the governing law of the general terms and conditions chosen and written by the multinational companies. Thus this paper studies and analyzes the practical reality of international arbitration and influence of arbitration clause with class action waiver with the U.S. Supreme Court and California case laws.

The main objective of this study is to introduce several issues in adhesive arbitration agreements, focusing on the relationship with class action, which is relatively unfamiliar in Korean arbitration. Currently, U.S. arbitration law and practice pose little threat to the enforceability of typical adhesive arbitration agreements, but the same cannot be said of adhesive arbitration agreements that prohibit class adjudication. Experience in applying both the unconscionability doctrine and effective vindication doctrine have presented certain improvements to facilitate the resolution of class actions especially through arbitration as an alternative dispute resolution mechanism. With the general review of enforcing adhesive arbitration agreements, especially those prohibiting class actions in U.S. arbitration practices, this study is expected to invite further discussions on the proper operation of class adjudication in Korean arbitration.