Law Commons^™

No Longer Just Company Men: The Flexible Workforce And Employment Discrimination, Review Essay On 'From Widgets To Digits Employment Regulation For The Changing Workplace', By Katherine V.W. Stone (2004), Miriam A. Cherry

All Faculty Scholarship

In her new book, From Widgets to Digits, Professor Katherine V.W. Stone reviews and analyzes the dramatic changes, both technological and demographic, that have transformed work in America during the last thirty years. The book broadly documents the shift from an economy that primarily relies on the production and consumption of goods to one in which learning and the transmittal of knowledge is central to the creation of wealth. Professor Stone describes how in the past, workers may have expected job security and long-term employment, but that recent economic, social, and technological change have led to a more temporary and …

Improving The Construction And Litigation Resolution Process: The 2005 Amendments To The Washington Condominium Act Are A Win-Win For Homeowners And Developers, Mark F. O'Donnell, David E. Chawes

Seattle University Law Review

On August 1, 2005, significant amendments to the Washington Condominium Act (WCA) became effective. These amendments were intended to substantially reduce water infiltration in multiunit residential buildings and to simplify the condominium construction dispute resolution process. The heart of the amendments is the implementation of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) procedures, as well as fee-shiftingprovisions which require the non-prevailing party to pay the attorney fees and costs of the prevailing party. A decade of lawsuits brought under the WCA by condominium owners associations against builders and developers, and in turn by builders against subcontractors, alleging defects in the ability of the …

World Without Trials, A, Marc Galanter

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Imagine some friendly visitors to America-from Europe or Asia or even from Mars-who are seeking to comprehend the American legal system. Our Martian visitors would have seen A Civil Action and The Runaway Jury at the Red Canal multiplex and surely they have seen syndicated episodes of the ubiquitous Law and Order. Upon arrival they turn on the TV news in their hotel room and scan the newspaper slipped under the door and find both saturated with accounts of square-jawed wife murderers, egomaniacal corporate executives, and freakish entertainers on trial. Unsurprisingly, our visitors readily conclude that the trial is the …

Vanishing Or Increasing Trials In The Netherlands, Carolien Klein Haarhuis, Bert Niemeijer

Journal of Dispute Resolution

In this article, we will address the question of whether something like vanishing trials exists in the Netherlands. This could be the case, as some of the causes of the decline in the number of trials advanced by Galanter are also observed in the Netherlands. ADR is gaining popularity, the costs of court procedures are on the rise, and there clearly exists a development toward "managerial justice."

Worlds In A Small Room, Christopher Honeyman

Journal of Dispute Resolution

In the lead article of this symposium, Marc Galanter points out that steeply declining trial rates hold true across a variety of trial genres, including state and federal courts, criminal and civil matters, and even federal administrative agencies' own trial equivalents. This brief essay will explore a new setting in which to examine Galanter's thesis.

Public Access To Information In Civil Litigation Vs. Litigant's Demand For Privacy: Is The Vanishing Trial An Avoidable Consequence, Dennis J. Drasco

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Recently, the legal and academic communities have been studying the phenomenon of the "vanishing trial." The phenomenon is an observation of the fact that the American court system is experiencing a trend of shrinking trial dockets. At least one scholar has partially attributed the decline in trials to the value placed upon settlement rather than adjudication within our justice system. Those competing values have spawned a debate regarding the secrecy and confidentiality characteristic of settlements versus public access to information in civil litigation. Jurisdictions that have addressed the issue have noted the complexities involved in regard to the factors to …

Vanishing Trial, Vanishing Community - The Potential Effect Of The Vanishing Trial On America's Social Capital, Robert M. Ackerman

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This essay considers the communitarian implications of the vanishing trial phenomenon. Its language is tentative, because while we now have-thanks to Marc Galanter and his associates-a great deal of useful data on the vanishing trial, we have only some hints regarding its causes, and an even less concrete notion of its likely consequences.' The empirical data unearthed by Professor Galanter and others has debunked a number of myths regarding the litigiousness of our society and the extent to which the courts are employed to resolve disputes. Given the care that has been invested in this research, it would be reckless …

How Much Justice Can We Afford: Defining The Courts' Roles And Deciding The Appropriate Number Of Trials, Settlement Signals, And Other Elements Needed To Administer Justice, John Lande

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This article discusses how the court system can function optimally given declining trial rates and the limited resources available. It does not provide a detailed analysis of court financing but rather discusses broad issues relating to the role of trials in the legal system.

Whose Finding Is It Anyway: The Division Of Labor Between Courts And Arbitrators With Respect To Waiver, David Lefevre

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Given the emphasis with which the Supreme Court has made clear its policy favoring arbitration, it is not surprising that some courts may have reacted by divesting themselves of a "gateway issue" long decided by courts. Traditionally, courts have determined whether a party has acted inconsistently with its right to arbitration, thereby waiving it, but a few courts found that the question is properly before an arbitrator. Recently, the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Marie v. Allied Home Mortgage Corporation2 established a framework through which the federal circuits may begin to close the potential split of authority regarding waiver …

A Price Theory Of Legal Bargaining: An Inquiry Into The Selection Of Settlement And Litigation Under Uncertainty, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

Conventional wisdom says that economic surplus is created when the cost of litigation is foregone in favor of settlement, a theory flowing from the Coase Theorem. The cost-benefit analysis weighs settlement against the expected value of litigation net of transaction cost. This calculus yields the normative proposition that settlement is a superior form of dispute resolution and so most trials are considered errors. While simple in concept, the prevailing economic model is flawed. This article is a theoretical inquiry into the selection criteria of settlement and trial. It applies principles of financial economics to construct a pricing theory of legal …

Privatizing Our Public Civil Justice System, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Demand For A Jury Trial And The Selection Of Cases For Trial, Joni Hersch

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This paper uses a unique data set to examine how parties in civil litigation choose whether to demand a jury trial or to waive this right and whether trial forum influences the probability of trial versus settlement. Plaintiffs are more likely to demand trial by jury when juries are relativety more favorable to plaintiffs in similar cases and jury trials are relatively less costly than bench trials. Cases in which jury trials are demanded are 5.5 percentage points more ikely to settle without a trial than cases in which jury trials are waived. This differential settlement rate by potential trial …

Resolving Civilian-Police Complaints In New York City: Reflections On Mediation In The Real World, Raymond W. Patterson

Scholarly Works

The Civilian Complaint Review Board mediation program associated with the New York City Police Department appears to be an attractive alternative to the investigative process offered to complainants, offering the possibility of a higher level of satisfaction for both the civilian and the police officer. According to the scheme devised by the agency and the NYPD, cases that meet mediation guidelines should move smoothly from investigations through the approval process, coming to a scheduled mediation in a timely manner. Complaints containing some factor making them inappropriate for mediation should be able to be identified during that approval process, thus ensuring …

The Hague Convention On Choice Of Court Agreements: The United States Joins The Judgment Enforcement Band, Matthew H. Adler, Michele Crimaldi Zarychta

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

In 2005, the United States signed a treaty that, if ratified, would be the United States' first-ever international agreement on judgment enforcement. The treaty provides that (a) where two commercial parties elect to resolve disputes between them in a particular forum, and (b) a judgment issues from that forum, then (c) all member states must enforce the judgment. It is a document driven by party autonomy; absent a choice of court agreement (in U.S. parlance, a choice of forum clause), the treaty has no meaning or applicability. The treaty's signing was the end of a rigorous journey. The United States …

The Tuna Court: Law And Norms In The World's Premier Fish Market, Eric Feldman

All Faculty Scholarship

Legal scholars have long emphasized the corrosive impact of conflict on long-term commercial and interpersonal relationships. To minimize the negative consequences of such conflict, members of close-knit groups who anticipate future interactions create ways of resolving their disputes with reference to internal group norms rather than relying on state-mandated legal rules. From farmers in California’s Shasta County to jewelers in midtown Manhattan and neighbors in Sanders County, the literature describes people who create norms of conflict management that are faster and less expensive than relying on formal law, and lessen the harm that conflict causes to their relationships. This article …

Rhetoric Of Disputes In The Courts, The Media, And The Legislature, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Technology Mediated Dispute Resolution (Tmdr): A New Paradigm For Adr, David Allen Larson

Faculty Scholarship

Technology is changing the way that children are communicating (particularly elementary and pre-school aged children), and these changes have significant implications for alternative dispute resolution processes and practices. Although ADR practitioners and theorists are not ignoring technology, we have focused almost exclusively on the question of how we can use technology to enhance our existing practices. We are not paying sufficient attention to the fact that young children are communicating differently than we communicate. Insufficient energy is being dedicated to the question of how those differences in communication inevitably influence the way that those children resolve disputes.

The article analyzes …

Teaching Adr In The Labor Field In China, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

My first visit to China, in 1994, was purely as a tourist, and came about almost by accident. In late September of that year I attended the XIV World Congress of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security in Seoul, South Korea. In the second week of October I was scheduled to begin teaching a one-term course in American law as a visiting professor at Cambridge University in England. Despite my hazy notions of geography, I realized it made no sense to return to the United States for the intervening week. The obvious solution was to continue flying …

Domestic Violence In Ghana: The Open Secret, Nancy Chi Cantalupo, Lisa Vollendorf Martin, Kay Pak, Sue Shin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This report discusses the findings of a Georgetown Law International Women’s Human Rights Clinic fact-finding team that traveled to Ghana, Africa in March 2003 to investigate domestic violence. The report reviews the contours of the domestic violence problem in Ghana and outlines the ways in which Ghanaian law and procedure was insufficiently addressing the problem at the time. Its chief findings include that the Ghanaian laws existing in 2003 inadequately punished perpetrators and protected victims of domestic violence and that court and police enforcement of the existing law was lacking, including because the government was allowing the removal of domestic …

The Procedural Soft Law Of International Arbitration, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

The conference organizers set me the daunting task of exploring arbitration's “non-national instruments,” which is to say the guidelines of professional groups and non-governmental organizations related to evidence, conflicts of interest, ethics and the organization of arbitral proceedings. Frequently these procedural standards build on the lore of international dispute resolution as memorialized in articles, treatises and learned symposium papers. These guidelines represent what might be called “soft law,” in distinction to the harder norms imposed by arbitration statutes and treaties, as well as the procedural framework adopted by the parties through choice of pre-established arbitration rules.

The growth of procedural …

Your Pace Or Mine: Culture, Time And Negotiation, Ian Macduff

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article explores the impact that different perceptions of time may have on cross-cultural negotiations. Beyond obvious issues of punctuality and timekeeping, differences may occur in the value placed on the uses of time and the priorities given to past, present, or future orientations. The role of time in negotiations involves two key dimensions: differing perceptions and values of time, and the management of time. Both dimensions, the author suggests, need to be on the negotiation table.

Interview With Michael Leathes, Nadja Alexander

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Alexander: Can you describe your professional role and how it relates to international mediation?Leathes: I have been an in-house counsel for most of my 36-year career, including general counsel of Pfizer International and of International Distillers & Vintners and general manager of BAT’s intellectual propertycompany. In all these roles I have been responsible for litigation portfolios internationally—in total, thousands of cases. Before I figured out a better way, I’m certain that I must have been responsible for about as many losses as wins. Then, in the late 80s, I discovered mediation…A: And what happened?L: Together with the teams of people …

Commercial Arbitration In The Islamic Middle East, Art Gemmell Dr.

art gemmell

As any observer of the international commercial scene will attest, globalization has spawned an untold number of daily international business transactions. From these transactions, disputes arose and states worried that their domestic court system would be unable to deal with foreign commercial disputes expeditiously and equitably. In order to both address these concerns and to promote the use of international arbitration, a host of international and regional conventions was established to deal with the peaceful settlement of disputes. The Islamic Middle East has not fully embraced what might be euphemistically referred to as a“modern” arbitral system.

Internationalization In College Sports: Issues In Recruiting, Amateurism, And Scope, Maureen A. Weston Prof.

Maureen A Weston

This article examines the impact of international student-athletes ("ISAs") participating in intercollegiate athletics in the United States. Particularly in certain collegiate sports, the predominance, and frankly, the competitive success of ISAs-both men and women-is gaining the attention, and, in some cases, the concern, of college coaches, players, parents of junior players, member institutions, fans, and commentators. A primary concern is whether many of the ISAs, coming from varied education and athletic programs, are properly evaluated in meeting the academic and amateur eligibility standards set by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Many ISAs are also on athletic scholarships, and, as …