This is the law as a map. Every statute, every controlling case, every doctrinal cluster, every document element, and every drafting decision relevant to the validity of a California employment arbitration agreement — set down here as nodes and the relations between them.
A transit map of California arbitration law. Fifteen doctrines run horizontally across a century — each a colored line. Authorities are stations on the lines they belong to; cases that govern several doctrines become transfer stations, the structural junctions of the field. Above the lines, dramatic arcs trace the preemptions and abrogations that bent the law. On the left, a drafter's panel: the ten decisions a drafter makes, the fifteen elements they produce. Focus any element and its wires reach across — lighting the doctrine lines it rides.
The same graph, plotted on time. The Federal Arbitration Act, in 1925, sets the floor that has constrained every state regulation since. Above the federal axis run the foundational California decisions — Armendariz, Iskanian, OTO, Adolph — each pulling the doctrine in a different direction. The bars trace doctrines in force; the dots mark events; the arcs trace the relations of interpretation, abrogation, and codification across the years.
Out of the graph, four narratives stand out — moments where the law moved decisively and the structure shifted. Each is a route through a small constellation of authorities, and each is currently shaping the drafting practice it touches.
A snapshot of the graph's present moment — what is good law, what has been overruled or preempted, which authorities carry the most structural weight, and which corners of the graph are most likely to move next.