Sure, but surely there is a significant difference. What you describe is essentially voluntary mediation process (you can always take it to court if you really

Sure, but surely there is a significant difference. What you describe is essentially voluntary mediation process (you can always take it to court if you really really want to) between parties with a similar level of power (ideally...). What the article complains about is clauses in contracts of adhesion that force people to use a private tribunal without the option to appeal to the public courts for civil suits. A tribunal which is furthermore designed to resolve disputes between individuals and large corporations on which the private tribunal depends for business. It's not so much more than one position as it is "more than one kind of settlement procedure", some of which are reasonable and some of which are quite obviously crooked. Edit: In fact, even a private arbitration tribunal would be OK if you could: a) guarantee that the costs of the process in time and money are not unreasonable, b) reserve the right of appeal to the public courts for both parties. Just the additional leverage to the consumer of being able to appeal the arbitration tribunal might remove a lot of the incentives for it to deliver unfair results, and most people would likely settle for a fair resolution by arbitration anyways, only going to the public courts when they believe it would produce a very different result than arbitration.