This chapter describes how, as a general rule, business entities negotiating commercial contracts may include terms on which they have reached agreement as long as those terms are not prohibited by applicable law or public policy. This rule is based on several factors including the doctrine of “freedom of contract” and the assumption that business entities are regarded as “sophisticated” parties who do not need special legal protections accorded to more vulnerable groups such as consumers and employees. The doctrine of freedom of contract permits business people to stipulate in their agreements their respective rights and liabilities as they see fit, even to the point of permitting a party to excuse non-performance or imperfect performance if the contract clearly so provides. Assume that a contract purports to absolve a manufacturer or supplier of goods from any liability to a business purchaser of the goods for any defect in those goods, whether attributable to negligence or otherwise. Why would any business purchaser agree to such terms? There may be many reasons, such as acquiring the goods or services at a lower cost and hedging against any defect with insurance, or perhaps, the goods or services are in short supply and the manufacturer or provider can insist on such terms, etc. In the absence of public policy to the contrary, freedom of contract in a transaction where all parties are business people are business people should allow such agreements. This chapter is not about freedom of contract as an abstract or general doctrine, it deals specifically with the use of forum selection and arbitration clauses in contracts. For the purposes of this chapter, the authors have treated forum selection clauses and arbitration clauses in much the same way. The efficacy of such clauses will be discussed in regard to their applicability to third parties, their relation to substantive rights and adjudication of the merits of a dispute, the methods of asserting a forum selection or arbitration clause defense, and the appropriate legal basis for enforcing such clauses.

We present results of the first attempts to accelerate partially stripped heavy ions in the Bevatron. Experiments were performed for hydrogen-like argon and neon ions, and, although the survival time of these ions in the 10-7 torr Bevatron vacuum was not sufficient to achieve full energy, valuable charge-changing cross section information was obtained.