Plea bargaining in the United States
The constitutionality of plea bargaining was established by "Brady v. United States" in 1970, although the Supreme Court warned that plea incentives which were sufficiently large or coercive as to over-rule defendants' abilities to act freely, or used in a manner giving rise to a significant number of innocent people pleading guilty, might be prohibited or lead to concerns over constitutionality. "Santobello v. New York" added that when plea bargains are broken, legal remedies exist.
Southland Corp. v. Keating
In the 1967 "Prima Paint" case the Court had opened the door to more widespread use of arbitration when it adopted the separability principle, compelling arbitration of a claim that a contract had been fraudulently induced. This holds that any challenge to the validity of a contract with an arbitration clause must be heard by the arbitrator first, unless the challenge is to the arbitration clause itself. It creates a legal fiction that two separate contracts exist.