A versInn of this piece originally appeared on ArborBridge's blog.
It is closely related to the defence of duress, a defence that applies to all offences except murder and attempted murder, where a defendant claims to have been forced to commit an offence by the threat of death or serious physical injury but in the defence of necessity it is circumstances that force the person to break the law.
If California had applied its law of duress to void an arbitration agreement, would it matter if the procedures in the coerced agreement were efficient?
1652, 134 L.Ed.2d 902 (1996), this Court said that fraud, duress, and unconscionability "may be applied to invalidate arbitration agreements without contravening § 2". All three defenses historically concern the making of an agreement.
Shariah Law, which applies in Saudi Arabia, does not accept statements made under duress.
But the inquiry becomes more complex when a doctrine normally thought to be generally applicable, such as duress or, as relevant here, unconscionability, is alleged to have been applied in a fashion that disfavors arbitration.
In the above examples, innocence is clearly not the case--but the same reasoning and behaviors could have been applied to a wrongly accused and innocent suspect--resulting in questioning under medical duress and even an invasive internal bodily search all without a warrant!
While no one should feel sympathy for a terrorist who attacked our citizenry--we should all be concerned if this same law enforcement tactic can be applied to any U.S. citizen--ourselves included and then the evidence that is obtained under duress without an attorney present can then be used to convict us.
After holding 156 passengers and crew hostage in what became Britain's longest airport siege, they were jailed at the Old Bailey, but freed on appeal in 2003 after it was ruled that the law about whether they had acted under duress had been wrongly applied.
The Article explores the implications of credible coercion analysis for existing philosophical conceptions of coercion, and applies its lessons in different legal contexts, ranging from contractual duress and unconscionability to plea bargains and bankruptcy.
An aspect of the infinite soul fleeing under duress is a state everyone has at some point experienced, regardless of terminology or ideology applied.
