Alternative Dispute Resolution

[The law merchant] was a special body of commercial law administered in merchant courts, which had emerged in the Middle Ages, and continued to appeal to many merchant-litigants despite its gradual decline ... [It] primarily involved judgments by private arbitration. In 1606, Coke ... ruled that the law merchant was ... part of the common law, and that the decisions of merchant courts could be reversed by common law courts. Bruce Benson quotes Leon Trakman ... as concluding that as a result "merchant courts ... were abolished, or alternatively, they were integrated into the common law system."

[T]he obvious better solution in this case is arbitration. So that my agency says to your agency: "Look we don't want to get into a fight with you, and you don't want to get into a fight with us. How about we go to that private judge over there, who has good reputation as an honest and competent judge. And we agree, that if he says that the television set was stolen from Mr. Friedman, you won't defend your customer when we recover the television set, and if they say that it was not stolen from Mr. Friedman, we will apologize and pay some damages for the costs that we've imposed on him."