Law Commons^™

Massachusetts Community Mediation Center Grant Program (Cmc-Gp) Fiscal Year 2023 Report And Evaluation, Madhawa Palihapitiya, Karina Zeferino

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Publications

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts (MA) continued its investment in affordable, cost-effective community mediation by appropriating $2,713,465 in Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 for the Community Mediation Center Grant Program (CMC Grant Program or Program), the Program’s eleventh year. This appropriation funded the continued operations of qualified Community Mediation Centers (Centers) that deliver free or low-cost dispute resolution services to the public. The Centers serve as the backbone of mediation across the state and are the publicly funded infrastructure on which statewide dispute resolution programs are built.

The FY2023 state funding in the CMC Grant Program budget appropriation …

Hague Service Convention Enters Into Force In Singapore, Adeline Chong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Singapore acceded to the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters (‘Service Convention’) on 16 May 2023. It has now entered into force in Singapore on 1 December 2023. Two declarations were lodged: first, against Article 8(1) objecting to the direct service of judicial documents upon persons in Singapore through foreign diplomatic or consular agents unless the documents are to be served upon a national of the State from which the documents originate; and secondly, objecting to service of judicial and extrajudicial documents in Singapore by the methods of transmission set …

The Return Of A Beloved Franchise: How Video Game Developers And Nil Licensing Brokers Can Use Mediation To Resolve Their Disputes, Nicholas Wynne

CJCR Blog

As of June 30, 2021, the NCAA no longer prohibited collegiate athletes from profiting from their name, image, and likeness (NIL). This was good news for EA Sports, a sports video game developer, considering that it announced in February of that year that it planned to bring back its college football game. Prior to this news from the NCAA, EA Sports was planning on moving forward with the game without rosters that contained the names, images, or likenesses of any collegiate players, but remained hopeful that NIL rules would change in the future. Luckily for EA Sports, the NCAA rules …

Are Compelled Arbitration Clauses In Coaches’ Contracts With The Nfl Effective And Fair To All Parties?, Andreas Kouzouloglou

CJCR Blog

Employment agreements between football coaches and the NFL grants the NFL commissioner “the full, and complete, and final jurisdiction and authority to arbitrate” various forms of disputes between the two parties. There is one case that is currently being litigated challenging the legality of this arbitration provision. In Flores v. NFL, the plaintiffs attack the clause for being overbroad and unconscionable. Arbitration agreements can be an effective way to settle disputes as an alternative to litigation, but sometimes when there is unequal bargaining power resulting in one entity in complete control of the process, the negative consequences outweigh potential benefits. …

Ups And Teamster: Setting A New Bar For Negotiations And Conflict Resolution, Angel Zheng

CJCR Blog

On July 25th, 2023, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (“Teamster”) reached a tentative agreement with United Parcel Service (“UPS”), affecting more than 340,000 UPS workers. A month later, on August 22nd, 86% of the union members voted in favor of ratifying the National Master Agreement. The negotiated agreement not only prevented one of the largest strikes in U.S. history, but also raised the bar for all workers in the labor movement. This entire conflict demonstrates the importance of negotiations and dispute resolution because negotiation was able to help avoid a major strike and negotiate a favorable contract.

This post was …

Randy Kiser’S New Book On Professional Judgment For Lawyers, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post describes Randall Kiser’s book, Professional Judgment for Lawyers. He defines professional judgment as “the deliberate synthesis of an attorney’s knowledge, experience, skills, discernment, and character to ethically advance a client’s interest.” The book combines empirical research, cognitive and social psychology, organizational behavior, legal ethics, and neuroscience to improve decision-making by attorneys, clients, judges, arbitrators, mediators, and juries.

Navigating The World Of Tiktok Influencers And Using Adr Methods To Negotiate Brand Deals And Contracts, Peri Ayzidor

CJCR Blog

Anyone using social media in the last three years has been exposed to or heard of TikTok. With over 1.4 billion monthly active users, the social media platform TikTok has taken the world by storm. It allows users to create videos lasting from 15 seconds to three minutes, covering thousands of categories, from makeup tutorials to tutoring explanations. The app has been a particular hit for influencers. An influencer is someone who has the power to impact the purchasing decisions of others because of a certain appeal or relationship with the audience. Many influencers have taken advantage of the app’s …

Emerging Stronger: How Uae’S Arbitration System Adapts To Post-Covid International Norms, Jacob Horowitz

CJCR Blog

On September 29th, 2023, the United Arab Emirates (“UAE”) published Federal Law No. 15 of 2023 (“Amendment Law”). This law effectively amended Federal Law No. 6 of 2018 On Arbitration (“Arbitration Law”) in a manner that demonstrated the country’s aim to further improve and modernize its arbitration system. Although the Amendment law consisted of numerous changes to UAE’s arbitration system, the most significant was its permittance of modern electronic technologies. In other words, the UAE now allows arbitration hearings to be conducted through technological platforms such as Zoom. This change reflects the post-COVID-19 pandemic trend of preference of virtual hearings …

Strength In Numbers: Negotiating To Mitigate Disputes Between Musicians And Digital Service Providers, Ryan Ashe

CJCR Blog

The music industry landscape was forever changed when it implemented the streaming model. While digital service providers (“DSP”) like Spotify or Apple Music essentially saved the industry from music piracy, the royalty distribution method of these companies has been a major disappointment for songwriters and musicians. Despite providing consistent revenue, most of the revenue earned by DSPs is not shared with musicians. For instance, Spotify retains 30% of every dollar it generates, paying the remaining 70% back to rightsholders as royalties, with 55% of revenue towards record labels and 15% to publishing companies. Despite songwriters and recording artists’ significant contributions …

Aureliano Buendia And President Gustavo Petro: The Impact Of A Dual-Sided Stakeholder And Leader On The Colombian Peace Accords, Samantha Sanchez

CJCR Blog

Colombia has endured a nearly 60-year-long internal conflict between paramilitary groups, and allegedly its own military, costing the lives of countless civilians and setting the country’s post-colonial development back decades. Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating a four-year-long deal with paramilitary groups that terrorized–mainly rural and indigent–neighborhoods for decades. However, many critics thought the award was premature, considering the nearly half a million deaths as a result and the impunity of human-rights offenders. Current struggles in the country prove that those critics may have been likely right.

This post was originally published …

Judge Capell’S Tiktok: A Model To Empower The Public To Be Their Own Conflict Negotiators, Marielle Burnett

CJCR Blog

What if social media platforms were leveraged to empower interested users to resolve their own conflicts without litigation? This is a question that Brooklyn Civil Court Judge Heela Capell is exploring through several online platforms, most notably TikTok.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution website on November 2, 2023. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above.

Special Challenges In Execution Of Arbitral Awards In Public Private Partnerships, Srividhya Ragavan, Niraj Kumar Seth

Faculty Scholarship

With around 47 million pending cases at various stages of Indian judiciary and one of the lowest levels of judges per million of population in the world, India’s arbitration regime presents a ray of hope for millions of Indians who face the prospect of justice being denied to them due to inordinate delays caused by a clogged judicial pipeline. The enactment of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 was presented as a viable alternative to resolve commercial disputes in a timely manner. This paper uses a case study to discuss how arbitration in India has not fulfilled the timeliness promise …

How Can The Internal Revenue Service Improve Its Alternative Dispute Resolution Programs To Deliver Better Benefits?, Armando Gonzalez

CJCR Blog

Most individuals and businesses file their tax return(s) and forget about the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) until it’s time to repeat the process the following year. However, sometimes disputes may arise “when a taxpayer fails to agree with an IRS finding, refuses to file a tax return, or refuses to comply with an IRS request for information.” To address some of these disputes, the IRS offers six alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”) programs through its Independent Office of Appeals, where mediation is leveraged to avoid costly litigation and lengthy appeals.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo Journal of Conflict …

The Human Rights Remedy Gap In Isds – The Potential Of The Hague Rules On Business And Human Rights Arbitration, Diane A. Desierto, Anne Van Aaken, Steven Ratner, Giorgia Sangiuolo, Martijn Scheltema, Katerina Yiannibas

Faculty Lectures and Presentations

The tensions between the protection of human rights and States’ obligations towards foreign investors has been the subject of extensive debates among States, civil society actors, business, and international organizations. The Hague Rules on Business and Human Rights Arbitration represent a recent effort to provide an avenue for resolving claims concerning human rights violations connected to business activities, including investment. These Rules may be linked to or incorporated in national investment laws, state contracts, or International Investment Agreements (IIAs). The Hague Rules aim to fill a currently existing gap in (access to) remedies for rightsholders and help both investors and …

Baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, And The Judicial Strike Zone - Home Run Or Foul On The Play?, Jan L. Jacobowitz

Articles

Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Micky Mantle, and Shoeless Joe Jackson—There are many well-known baseball legends, but perhaps less well-known is the story of Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a judge turned baseball commissioner who inspired not only baseball fans, but also the American Bar Association’s first Judicial Canon of Ethics. The parallel stories of baseball’s greatest scandal, the judge appointed to be the first baseball commissioner, and the development of the judicial canons, provide context for the current controversial judicial prohibition--the appearance of impropriety.

Impartiality And The Construction Of Trust In Investor-State Dispute Settlement, Stavros Brekoulakis, Anna Howard

Singapore International Dispute Resolution Academy

This article analyses impartiality in investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) by identifying the way that the parties’ trust in arbitrators is constructed. Drawing on the findings of a large-scale empirical project, it questions the applicability of an orthodox judicial doctrine of impartiality to ISDS on the grounds that trust in arbitrators is constructed on a fundamentally different basis from that of trust in judges. The primary feature of a judicial doctrine of impartiality is that trust is founded on an absolutist approach to impartiality which is intended to ensure that judges have no predispositions to parties. In contrast, trust in ISDS …

Twenty Years After Krieger V Law Society Of Alberta: Law Society Discipline Of Crown Prosecutors And Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Krieger v. Law Society of Alberta held that provincial and territorial law societies have disciplinary jurisdiction over Crown prosecutors for conduct outside of prosecutorial discretion. The reasoning in Krieger would also apply to government lawyers. The apparent consensus is that law societies rarely exercise that jurisdiction. But in those rare instances, what conduct do Canadian law societies discipline Crown prosecutors and government lawyers for? In this article, I canvass reported disciplinary decisions to demonstrate that, while law societies sometimes discipline Crown prosecutors for violations unique to those lawyers, they often do so for violations applicable to all lawyers — particularly …

Cjcr Publishes Volume 24, Issue 3 (Symposium 2022), Halle Jaffe

CJCR Blog

The Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution—the country’s preeminent legal journal of arbitration, negotiation, mediation, settlement, and restorative justice— published the web edition of Volume 24, Issue 3 (Symposium 2022). The print edition of the issue has also been released.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution website on September 8, 2023. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above.

Addressing Barriers To Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In Massachusetts Community Mediation, Madhawa Palihapitiya, Shino Yokotsuka, Karina Zeferino, Jarling Ho

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Publications

This report presents over three years of systematically engaging, documenting and analyzing the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) needs/gaps and assets of state funded community mediation centers in Massachusetts. The report was compiled by researchers and an in-house DEI expert at the statutory state office of dispute resolution, the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) at the University of Massachusetts Boston. The office has been serving as a neutral forum and state-level resource for over 30 years.

The report is based on qualitative research that falls into the category of community based participatory research conducted through a series of community …

Training Your Mediator Bot, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This somewhat tongue-in-cheek post discusses biases in AI systems. Noting that AI bots need to be “trained,” this post suggests that untrained mediator bots may spew out unwanted interventions such as providing undesired evaluations of BATNA values – or failing to provide desired evaluations. So mediators probably will need to co-mediate with their bots for a while to observe and correct its biases. Ironically, bots may produce language that normal humans understand much better than the confusing jargon we habitually use. So the mediator bots may need to train human mediators.

Teaching Students To Focus On Party Decision-Making, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post describes why law schools don’t teach students very much about helping clients make decisions and suggests techniques for doing so. It suggests (1) focusing on parties’ roles throughout relevant courses, (2) including meaningful party roles in simulations and competitions, (3) using simulations focusing solely on preparation, (4) using multi-stage simulations, (5) helping students focus on parties’ intangible interests in simulations and Stone Soup interviews, (6) using the terms “pre-mediation-session” or “before mediation sessions,” (7) taking advantage of the litigation interest and risk assessment framework and materials, and (8) recommending that schools offer a course on strategic case evaluation …

Addressing Barriers To Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In Massachusetts Community Mediation, Madhawa Palihapitiya, Jarling Ho, Shino Yokotsuka, Karina Zeferino

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Publications

This report presents over three years of systematically engaging, documenting and analyzing the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) needs/gaps and assets of state funded community mediation centers in Massachusetts. The report was compiled by researchers and an in-house DEI expert at the statutory state office of dispute resolution, the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) at the University of Massachusetts Boston. The office has been serving as a neutral forum and state-level resource for over 30 years.

The report is based on qualitative research that falls into the category of community based participatory research conducted through a series of community …

Focus On Party Decision-Making, John M. Lande

Faculty Blogs

A major motivation in the modern dispute resolution movement has been to increase and improve parties’ decision-making in their legal disputes. Parties can participate more effectively in negotiation and mediation if they engage in decision-making early in disputes. This suggests the importance of good preparation before negotiation and mediation sessions. When parties are well-prepared in advance, they are as knowledgeable, confident, and assertive as possible in making decisions in their cases

Charlie Irvine's Challenge To Mediators To Describe Your Mediation System, John M. Lande

Faculty Blogs

Charlie Irvine is the Course Leader on the University of Strathclyde’s (Scotland) MSc/LLM in Mediation and Conflict Resolution and the Director of the Strathclyde Mediation Clinic. The Clinic provides a free mediation service in which experienced practitioners work alongside trainee mediators to help people resolve disputes without going to court or tribunal. The following is Charlie’s Director’s Column published in Mediation Matters!, the Clinic’s quarterly newsletter. Irvine wrote an account of his own mediation system that was one of ten real mediation systems Lande analyzed in Real Mediation Systems to Help Parties and Mediators Achieve Their Goals.

The Unfulfilled Promise Of Self-Determination In Court-Connected Mediation, Peter Reilly

Faculty Scholarship

In the context of mediation, party self-determination refers to the ability of disputants to have power, control, and autonomy in the process. There are numerous process design questions involved in running a mediation, no matter its subject matter. Consider just one example: “Should the mediation be conducted in-person, or virtually?” The answer to this question can have a profound impact on the direction and course of a mediation, including its outcome. Yet, in the context of court-connected mediation, disputing parties are not consistently provided the opportunity to give input on how such process design questions are resolved. In fact, these …

A Further Look At A Hague Convention On Concurrent Proceedings, Paul Herrup, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The current project of the Hague Conference on Private International Law has reached a critical juncture that requires careful consideration of the terms that delineate the scope of the proposed convention. Work to date has not followed the mandate of the Council on General Affairs and Policy to produce a convention that would deal with concurrent proceedings, understood as including pure parallel proceedings and related actions. In two previous articles we have addressed the practical needs that should be addressed by the concurrent proceedings project and the general architecture of such a convention. The process is now mired in terminological …

A Theory Of Interests In The Context Of Hybrid Warfare: It's Complex, Cynthia Alkon, Sanda Kaufman

Faculty Scholarship

We will begin with a discussion about how the hybrid warfare context is different from other conflict contexts. We will describe some complexity aspects that make hybrid warfare challenging to negotiators. We will then discuss whether classical negotiation theory prescriptions apply to a hybrid warfare context, especially regarding interests. We will argue that these prescriptions related to classical negotiations are unlikely to work in this context. We will focus our analysis on a subset of hybrid warfare attacks, consisting of short-term, time-sensitive, high-risk crises, where negotiations are possible and necessary, such as ransom demands, rather than on hybrid warfare situations …

Negotiation Theories Engage Hybrid Warfare, Nancy Welsh, Sharon Press, Andrea Kupfer Schneider

Faculty Scholarship

The concept of hybrid warfare has arisen recently to describe the efforts, short of outright war, used by nations to disrupt and destabilize each other. This Article reviews available negotiation theories, concepts and skills to determine whether they can help governmental actors and business organizations targeted by hybrid warfare respond effectively. In other words, can negotiation theories, concepts and skills be used to engage effectively in “hybrid conflict management”? The Article urges that international diplomacy and multiparty negotiation theories and skills, as well as the more recent scholarship that has developed regarding hostage negotiation and “wicked problems,” are likely to …

Confidentiality Clauses In Settlement Agreements After The Consumer Review Fairness Act, Wayne Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

Online commerce has skyrocketed in recent years, and shoppers are purchasing goods or services online in greater numbers every year. The COVID-19 pandemic has only hastened the trend. One significant aspect of online shopping is the presence of consumer reviews posted by prior purchasers of goods or services, describing their experience with the products, the services and/or the selling merchant. A vast majority of online shoppers say that they rely on these reviews to help inform their purchasing decisions. Positive reviews can be tremendously beneficial to a business’ profitability, whereas negative reviews can be equally detrimental. Users of the internet …

Party Self-Empowerment From Preparation For Mediation Sessions, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

If parties are well-prepared before mediation sessions, they will be knowledgeable, confident, and assertive so that they can exercise their decision-making authority as well as possible. Well-prepared parties can make decisions before and during mediation sessions rather than simply relying on mediators to promote their self-determination. In other words, they will feel more empowered to participate productively. Depending on the circumstances, mediators, lawyers, courts, and/or mediation programs may help parties get prepared.