Hiro Aragaki

Hiro Aragaki joined the UC Hastings faculty in 2022 as Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution. His scholarly interests cluster around the intersection of contract and procedure, and his work on ADR has been published in top U.S. law journals, such as the N.Y.U. Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal Online. It has also won prestigious accolades, including being selected for the Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum (2011), Honorable Mention in the AALS Scholarly Papers Competition (2013), and being selected for presentation at the Branstetter New Voices Workshop at Vanderbilt Law School (2014).

Professor Aragaki has written extensively on federal arbitration law and is currently engaged in a number of long-term projects looking at mediation from comparative, development, and empirical perspectives. He has frequently been called upon to train judges and lawyers in ADR and consult on ADR reform projects around the world, most recently as an Advisor to the Expert Committee on Mediation, Supreme Court of India, and as an advisor to the judiciary of Kazakhstan on arbitration law reforms.

Before coming to Hastings, Professor Aragaki was a Professor of Law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Professor of Law & Ethics at Fordham University Graduate School of Business Administration in New York, where he taught courses on business law. Before teaching in higher education, he practiced law at global law firms and clerked for the Hon. Fern M. Smith, U.S. District Court (N.D. Cal.).

Professor Aragaki is a former member of the California State Bar Standing Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution, a former member of the AALS Section on Dispute Resolution Executive Committee, and a former Board member of the California Dispute Resolution Council. He currently holds leadership positions in the ABA Section on International Law and ABA ROLI, and is a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS School of Law in London. He serves as an arbitrator and mediator at JAMS, and is admitted to practice in California, New York, the District of Columbia, and England & Wales.

Expertise

• Alternative dispute resolution
• Arbitration
• Civil litigation
• Civil procedure
• Comparative law
• Contract law
• International business transactions
• International commercial arbitration
• International law
• Law and development
• Negotiation and mediation

Education

• J.D. Stanford University Law School (1994 — 1997)
• M.Phil., doctoral studies University of Cambridge (1990 — 1994)
• B.A. Yale University (1986 — 1990)

Selected Scholarship

• Civil Justice Reform in Chinese Law and Society (forthcoming)
  2022

• A Snapshot of National Legislation on Same Neutral Med-Arb and Arb-Med Around the Globe
  2022

• The Critical Theory Legacy of Jean Sternlight’s Panacea or Corporate Tool?
  2021

• The Metaphysics of Arbitration: A Reply to Hensler & Khatam
  2018

• Arbitration Reform in India: Challenges and Opportunities
  2018

• Arbitration: Creature of Contract, Pillar of Procedure
  2016

• Constructions of Arbitration’s Informalism: Autonomy, Efficiency, and Justice
  2016

• Does Rigorously Enforcing Arbitration Agreements Promote “Autonomy”?
  2016

• The Federal Arbitration Act as Procedural Reform
  2014

• AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion and the Antidiscrimination Theory of Federal Arbitration Act Preemption
  2013

• Arbitration’s Suspect Status
  2011

• Equal Opportunity for Arbitration
  2011

• The Mess of Manifest Disregard
  2009

• Deliberative Democracy as Dispute Resolution? Conflict, Interests, and Reasons
  2009