Alyssa S. King
35-05 94th Street, Apartment 5L, Jackson Heights, NY 11372 617.717.8772
Research and Teaching Interests
Primary: Civil Procedure, ADR, Contracts, Transnational Litigation, Comparative Law
Secondary: Conflicts of Law, Federal Courts, International Business Transactions, EU Law
Education
Yale University,Ph.D. in law expected 2018
Thesis: Arbitration in U.S. Civil Procedure
Teaching:Chevron v. EcuadorReading Group
Yale Law School, J.D.,2012
Yale Journal of International Law, Executive Editor
Yale Law Journal, Editor
Veterans Legal Services Clinic
Research assistant to Professors Reva Siegel and Susan Rose-Ackerman
Écoledes Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Paris X, Master 2Théorie et Analyse du Droit(Legal Theory),mention très bien (highesthonors),2009
Thesis: The Reform of Article 61-1 of the Constitution and the Litigant in French Constitutional Law (in French)
Harvard-École NormaleSupérieure Fellow(residency at the ENS)
Harvard University, A.B. magna cum laude in Social Studies, 2008
Phi Beta Kappa
John Harvard Scholar (top 5% of class) 2005—2006
Work Experience
Yale Law School Information Society Project, Resident Fellow, 2015—present
Clerk to the Hon. Barrington D. Parker, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,2014—2015
Clerk to the Hon. Nicholas G. Garaufis, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, 2013—2014
Peking University School of Transnational Law,C.V. Starr Lecturer in Law, 2012-2013
Yale Law School Howard M. Holtzmann Fellow (research in international arbitration)
Courses: Transnational Legal Practice I and II, Contract Drafting, Second Year Research Seminar, Comparative Law Reading Group
Publications and Works in Progress
Ceding Jurisdiction to Maintain Control: States and Arbitration(job talk, work in progress)
The Supreme Court has repeatedly expanded the scope of Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) preemption and limited the ability of state courts to refuse to compel arbitration. Its cases often reserve for the arbitrator questions the state courts may not resolve. With the displacement of state courts comes the displacement of state legislatures’ policy judgments. Yet FAA preemption offers state legislatures an unusual opportunity for uncooperative federalism.State courtscan follow federal courts in placing more matters within the arbitrator’s competence. State legislaturesthen have options for regulating arbitral process and the review of arbitral awards. Unlike state court decisions, arbitrator’s decisions face only minimal federal review and so are unlikely to be struck down. By enlisting arbitrators in their projects, state courts and legislatures can develop a new regulatory balance that adapts to expanded arbitrator jurisdiction.
Too Much Power and Not Enough: The Class Arbitration Dilemma, 21 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. (forthcoming 2017)
This article uses data from American Arbitration Association (AAA) class arbitration dockets to investigate the effect of a series of Supreme Court decisions limiting the use of class arbitration and argue that further reform is necessary. Class arbitration has not ended, but arbitrators’ willingness to find jurisdiction for class arbitration has decreased dramatically.Before the Court decidedStolt-Nielsen v. AnimalFeedsin 2010, AAA arbitrators found that they had the ability to conduct a class arbitration in the majority of cases; different accounts give frequencies of 70% or 90%. After Stolt-Nielsen, AAA arbitrators ruled that class arbitration was possible in 45% of awardsconstruing ambiguous arbitration clauses. Their rulings have also become markedly less consistent, leading to a need to reinstate what was once a clear arbitrator-created default in favor of class. Since contracts remain silent and arbitrators can rely neither on their own precedents nor on public policy, they are limited in their ability to solve the problem on their own. Legislation or regulation are required.
New Judicial Review in Old Europe, 44 Ga. J. of Int’l & Comp. L. 1 (2015)
Several old parliamentary democracieshave now adopted forms of constitutional review their jurists once vehemently opposed. In contrast to the internal issues usually discussed in relation to the choice of constitutional review in a liberal democracy, the recent rise of judicial review in Western Europe seems to be driven by the need to respond to external developments, namely EU integration and the expansion of European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) jurisprudence. Transnational review displaces the control that national parliaments once had over a core part of their constitutions: the relationship between the state and its citizens. By harnessing this opposition to judicial review under transnational law, long-time supporters of national judicial review put the issue on the national agenda, and convincedthe British and French parliaments to adopt it.Given these countries’ position in the EU, domestic law-based rights review is unlikely to be an effective alternative to review under the ECHR by either domestic or international courts. Doing so would require more significant changes to European Court of Human Rightsjurisdiction. Despite the strikingly nationalist rhetoric accompanying them, the reforms thus represent a conciliatory stance towards integration.
Comment: Procedural Perils: The Supreme People’s Court on the Enforcement of Arbitral Awards, 17 Asian-Pacific L. & Pol’y J. 1 (2015)
Commentators have often remarked on the PRC’s bad reputation for enforcing awards, including favoritism to domestic parties and arbitral institutions. The Chinese Supreme People’s Court often rejects foreign awards enforced under theNew York Convention for procedural violations, while it typically rejects domestically issued, foreign-related awards on challenges to the arbitral tribunal’s jurisdiction. This latter result is unsurprising; tribunal jurisdiction and the timing of challenges to it present some of the thorniest issues in PRC arbitration law. The prevalence of procedural pitfalls for New York Convention award holders is more unexpected. One possible reason for this difference may be that holders of awards rendered abroad lack the opportunity to present evidence they complied with New York Convention rules.
The F.G. Hemisphere Case in Hong Kong,1 J. Disp. Prevention & Resol. 49 (2013)
In the F.G. Hemisphere Case, Hong Kong courts were faced with a decision on whether to enforce an arbitral award against a sovereign state, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, despite the objections of the Central Government of the People’s Republic of China. Within this debate lay fundamental differences in how to understand the nature of law and China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong under the “one country, two systems” regime. Although the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (CFA)appeared to rely on precedents from the United States and United Kingdom, it ultimately took a view of executive power much closer to the mainland’s position. This CFA’s theory of an executive-led system is a troubling development that may presage further problems for the territory’s ability to maintain an independent and separate legal system.
Recent Development: A Supreme Court, Supreme Parliament, and Transnational National
Rights, 35 YaleJ. Int’l L. 245 (2010)
Discussing the hope by many in Parliament that the new UK Supreme Court would serve as a buffer to the European Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights and arguing that it probably will not.
Online and Shorter Publications
Review of “Public Law Adjudication in Common Law Systems”, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog (Sept. 24, 2016)
As Jean-Louis Debré’s Term as President Comes to a Close—Whither the French Constitutional Council?, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog (Jan. 20, 2016)
The Trouble with Hong Kong’s Chief Executives, ChinaFile (Jan. 28, 2016) (with Denise Y. Ho)
Why Hong Kong’s Lawyers Marched, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog (July 2, 2014) (with Alvin Y. H. Cheung)
Whose “Constitutional Moment” is it Anyway? A Response to Professor Chen on Electoral Reform in Hong Kong, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog (Apr. 1, 2014) (with Alvin Y. H. Cheung)
Presentations
Aggregation Through Assignment, Brooklyn Law School International Business Roundtable (Mar. 2017)
The Routinization of Class Arbitration, Judicial Politics Graduate Student Conference (July 2016)
An American Dialogue of Judges?, Younger Comparativists Conference (Mar. 2016)
Hong Kong as Devolution Problem, Younger Comparativists Conference (Apr. 2015) (with Alvin Y.H. Cheung)
Legal Nationalism and European Judicial Review, Younger Comparativists Conference (Apr. 2014)
Bar Admission
New York (2013)
Languages
English (native), French (fluent), Mandarin (elementary), Cantonese (elementary)
References
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Academic:
Bruce Ackerman
Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science
Yale Law School
(203) 432-0065
Lea Brilmayer
Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of International Law
Yale Law School
(203) 432-0194
Robert C. Post
Sterling Professor of Law
Yale Law School
(203) 432-1660
W. Michael Reisman
Myers S. McDougal Professor of International Law
Yale Law School
(203) 432-4962
Professional:
The Hon. Nicholas G. Garaufis
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York
(718) 613-2540
The Hon. Barrington D. Parker
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
(212) 857-2211
Judith Resnik
Arthur Liman Professor of Law
Yale Law School
(203) 432-1447
Susan Rose-Ackerman
Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence
Yale Law School
(203) 432-4891
Reva B. Siegel
Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law
Yale Law School
(203) 432-6791
John Fabian Witt
Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor
Yale Law School
(203) 432-4944
StephenYandle
Vice Dean Emeritus
Peking University School of Transnational Law
(312) 587-3147
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