For the second time this month, the Supreme Court issued a per curiam opinion in favor of arbitration. In In re Nat’l Benefit Advisory Assoc. the Court today ruled that “tortious interference claims between a signatory to an arbitration agreement and agents or affiliates of the other signatory arise more from the contract than general law, and thus fall on the arbitration side of the scale.”

In a second opinion issued today, Tesco Am. Inc. v. Strong Indus., the Court addressed the question of whether “an appellate judge is disqualified because, unbeknownst to her, before she took the bench another attorney at her very large firm played a very small role in the early stages” of the appeal. In a majority opinion written by Justice Brister, the Court held that she should be disqualified.

Justice Hecht issued this dissenting opinion, explaining that “Justice Higley’s participation in the decision of the court of appeals was error, though no fault of her own, but not error that requires reversal. We have an opinion joined by two other Justices, fully explaining the reasons for their decision, and we should proceed to determine the issues the parties have raised here.”