Law Commons^™

Court-Ordered Adr: What Are The Limits?, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

Increasingly, courts across the country are turning to non-judicial dispute resolution processes - "alternative dispute resolution" or "ADR" - to handle overwhelming caseloads.' Proponents of non-judicial processes state that ADR benefits courts and litigants by reducing the time between the filing and disposition of cases, saving judges' time so that they are available for the cases that really need them, saving money for the parties to the suit, and perhaps most importantly, increasing litigants' satisfaction with the manner in which their disputes are resolved.

A growing body of empirical evidence has begun to support the proponents' claims. A study of …