Book Review: "When Companies Run the Courts" sets off red alerts for the structural injustices we live among
After reading Brendan Ballou’s When Companies Run the Courts: Forced Arbitration and America’s Secret Justice System, one is easily left with the distinct, unsettling conviction that modern corporate capitalism holds nothing sacred, least of all the constitutional right to a day in court. Brendan Ballou, a veteran prosecutor and litigator, delivers an indictment of a parallel legal system engineered by and for multinational corporations.
He dismantles the corporate public relations myth that these private tribunals offer an “efficient” alternative to traditional litigation. In reality, Ballou demonstrates that forced arbitration is structurally designed to obliterate legal precedent, shield corporate wrongdoers from public scrutiny, and subject individual citizens to an asymmetrical forum where the rules are as unclear as they are unfair.
For those unaware, forced arbitration is a hidden trap buried in the fine print of everyday contracts. When you click “I agree” to update an app or sign a new job offer you may unknowingly cede your right to sue a company in a real court.
If that company rips you off, hurts you, or breaks the law, you are forced to take your complaint to a private, closed-door meeting run by a corporate-paid hiring person called an arbitrator. Because this private system bans people from banding together in class-action lawsuits, it makes it incredibly difficult for regular people to win, allowing big corporations to hide their worst behavior from the public.
https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2026/06/book-review-when-companies-run-the-courts-sets-off-red-alerts-for-the-structural-injustices-we-live-among.html